m_; 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