Lower down, the stream became more placid, and opened into a quiet piece of water which afforded a rude haven to two or three fishermen's boats, then lying high and dry on the sand, the tide being out.

Two or three miserable huts could be seen beside this little haven, inhabited probably by the owners of the boats, but inferior in every respect to the establishment of mine host, though that was miserable enough.
I had but a minute or two to make these observations, yet during that space my companion showed symptoms of impatience, and more than once shouted, 'Cristal--Cristal Nixon,' until the old man of the preceding evening appeared at the door of one of the neighbouring cottages or outhouses, leading the strong black horse which I before commemorated, ready bridled and saddled.

My conductor made Cristal a sign with his finger, and, turning from the cottage door, led the way up the steep path or ravine which connected the sequestered dell with the open country.
Had I been perfectly aware of the character of the road down which I had been hurried with so much impetuosity on the preceding evening, I greatly question if I should have ventured the descent; for it deserved no better name than the channel of a torrent, now in a good measure filled with water, that dashed in foam and fury into the dell, being swelled with the rains of the preceding night.

I ascended this ugly path with some difficulty although on foot, and felt dizzy when I observed, from such traces as the rains had not obliterated, that the horse seemed almost to have slid down it upon his haunches the evening before.
My host threw himself on his horse's back, without placing a foot in the stirrup--passed me in the perilous ascent, against which he pressed his steed as if the animal had had the footing of a wild cat.

The water and mud splashed from his heels in his reckless course, and a few bounds placed him on the top of the bank, where I presently joined him, and found the horse and rider standing still as a statue; the former panting and expanding his broad nostrils to the morning wind, the latter motionless, with his eye fixed on the first beams of the rising sun, which already began to peer above the eastern horizon and gild the distant mountains of Cumberland and Liddesdale.
He seemed in a reverie, from which he started at my approach, and, putting his horse in motion, led the way at a leisurely pace through a broken and sandy road, which traversed a waste, level, and uncultivated tract of downs, intermixed with morass, much like that in the neighbourhood of my quarters at Shepherd's Bush.