Mr.Dinmont had probably made a visit there either of business or pleasure.

'I wish,' thought Brown, 'the good farmer had staid till I came up; I should not have been sorry to ask him a few questions about the road, which seems to grow wilder and wilder.' In truth, nature, as if she had designed this tract of country to be the barrier between two hostile nations, has stamped upon it a character of wildness and desolation.

The hills are neither high nor rocky, but the land is all heath and morass; the huts poor and mean, and at a great distance from each other.

Immediately around them there is generally some little attempt at cultivation; but a half-bred foal or two, straggling about with shackles on their hind legs, to save the trouble of inclosures, intimate the farmer's chief resource to be the breeding of horses.

The people, too, are of a ruder and more inhospitable class than are elsewhere to be found in Cumberland, arising partly from their own habits, partly from their intermixture with vagrants and criminals, who make this wild country a refuge from justice.