Brown meanwhile proceeded northward at a round pace along the moorish tract called the Waste of Cumberland.  He passed a solitary house, towards which the horseman who preceded him had apparently turned up, for his horse’s tread was evident in that direction.  A little farther, he seemed to have returned again into the road.  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.  So much were the men of these districts in early times the objects of suspicion and dislike to their more polished neighbours, that there was, and perhaps still exists, a by-law of the corporation of Newcastle prohibiting any freeman of that city to take for apprentice a native of certain of these dales.  It is pithily said, ’Give a dog an ill name and hang him’; and it may be added, if you give a man, or race of men, an ill name they are very likely to do something that deserves hanging.  Of this Brown had heard something, and suspected more, from the discourse between the landlady, Dinmont, and the gipsy; but he was naturally of a fearless disposition, had nothing about him that could tempt the spoiler, and trusted to get through the Waste with daylight.  In this last particular, however, he was likely to be disappointed.  The way proved longer than he had anticipated, and the horizon began to grow gloomy just as he entered upon an extensive morass.

Choosing his steps with care and deliberation, the young officer proceeded along a path that sometimes sunk between two broken black banks of moss earth, sometimes crossed narrow but deep ravines filled with a consistence between mud and water, and sometimes along heaps of gravel and stones, which had been swept together when some torrent or waterspout from the neighbouring hills overflowed the marshy ground below.  He began to ponder how a horseman could make his way through such broken ground; the traces of hoofs, however, were still visible; he even thought he heard their sound at some distance, and, convinced that Mr. Dinmont’s progress through the morass must be still slower than his own, he resolved to push on, in hopes to overtake him and have the benefit of his knowledge of the country.  At this moment his little terrier sprung forward, barking most furiously.