328 A Walk from 



and cheerful on the green hill slopes and on the quiet 

 banks of the river. I saw fields of wheat quite green, 

 looking as if they needed another month's sun to fit 

 them for harvesting. Lodged in a little village about 

 eight miles from Hexham. The next day walked on 

 to the little hamlet of Fallstones, a distance of about 

 twenty miles. As I ascended the valley, the scene 

 changed rapidly. The river dwindled to a narrow 

 stream. The hills that walled it on either side grew 

 higher and balder, and the clouds lay cold and dank 

 upon their bleak and sullen brows. The hamlets 

 edged in here and there grew thinner, smaller and 

 shabbier. The road was barred and gated about once 

 in a mile, to keep cattle and sheep from wandering ; 

 there being no fences nor hedges running parallel with 

 it. In a word, the premonitory symptoms of a bare 

 border-land thickened at every turn. 



Another day brought me into the midst of a wild 

 region, which might be called No-man's-land ; although 

 most of it belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. It 

 is all in the solitary grandeur of heather-haired hills, 

 which tinge, with their purple flush, the huge, black- 

 winged clouds that alight upon them. Only here and 

 there a shepherd's cottage is to be seen half way up the 

 heights, or sheltering itself in a clump of trees in glen 

 or gorge, like a benighted traveller bivouacking for a 



