They had bowed to a master, even those slow Cumbrians who admired little but fat cattle and blood horses.

He had made a sensation, had seen wonder and respect in dull eyes, and tasted for a moment that esteem which he had singularly failed to find elsewhere.
But he had been prudent.

The Mr.Gilbert Craster who had been travelling on secret business in Nithsdale and the Ayrshire moorlands had not been revealed in the change-house of Newbigging.

There he had passed by the name, long since disused, of Gabriel Lovel, which happened to be his true one.

It was a needful precaution, for the times were crooked.