They struck across a rushy field, crept through a ragged hedge, and came out upon rough pasture that gradually merged into the heath.  A green bank and a straggling line of stones, some fallen in large masses and some standing two or three feet high, presently stretched across their path, and Foster stopped for a few moments.  The bank and moat-like hollow he looked down upon marked the vallum; the squared stones, to which the lime still clung, apparently undetachable, the murus.  He was looking at the great rampart a Roman emperor had built.  He understood that it was higher and less damaged farther west and would have liked to follow it, but he had something else to think about than antiquities.

The heath got rougher when they left the wall.  Spongy moss grew among the ling that caught their feet, and the ground began to rise.  Looking at the sun, Foster saw they were not taking as northerly a line as he had expected, but the back of a bold ridge rose between them and the west and he supposed Pete meant to follow its other side.  They stopped to eat the food they had brought where a stream had worn away a hollow in a bank.  The sun, striking the wall of peaty soil behind them, was pleasantly warm.  It was a calm day, with slowly-drifting clouds, and gray shadows streaked the wide, brown waste.

There was no house in sight and only in one place a few scattered dots that looked like sheep.  Getting out his map, Foster noted that they were crossing the high neck where the Pennine range slopes down to meet the southern spurs of the Cheviots.  He had seen nothing in Canada wilder or more desolate than this bleak tableland.

In the afternoon they toiled up the rise he had noticed in the distance, winding in and out among soft places and hummocks of the peat, but when they came to the top there was not the dip to a valley he had expected.  The ground was rougher than before, and the moor rolled on, rising and falling in heathy undulations.  By degrees, however, it became obvious that they had crossed the water-shed and were descending, for streams that increased in size crossed their path.  So far, none were deep, but the ravines they ran through began to seam the gradual slope and Foster understood Pete’s remark that something depended on there not being much water in the burns.

Looking back after a time, he saw the crest of the moor run up behind them against the sky, and the next ravine they came to was awkward to climb down, while he was wet to the knees when he crossed the burn.  A mile farther on, he reached another that was worse and they had to work back along the crumbling sides of its channel to find a place to cross.  After this their progress was marked by erratic curves, and Foster was soon splashed with black peat-mud and green slime.  By and by they came to a broad level, shut in by a ridge on its other side, and picked their way carefully between clumps of rushes and curious round holes filled with dark-colored water.  The ground was very soft and walking became a toil, but Pete held steadily to his winding course and Foster, although getting tired, did not lag behind.