Indeed, the whole open ground of this district, where it approaches the sea, has, except in a few favoured spots, the same uniform and dreary character.
Advancing about a hundred yards from the brink of the glen, we gained a still more extensive command of this desolate prospect, which seemed even more dreary, as contrasted with the opposite shores of Cumberland, crossed and intersected by ten thousand lines of trees growing in hedgerows, shaded with groves and woods of considerable extent, animated by hamlets and villas, from which thin clouds of smoke already gave sign of human life and human industry.
My conductor had extended his arm, and was pointing the road to Shepherd's Bush, when the step of a horse was heard approaching us.

He looked sharply round, and having observed who was approaching, proceeded in his instructions to me, planting himself at the same time in the very middle of the path, which, at the place where we halted, had a slough on the one side and a sandbank on the other.
I observed that the rider who approached us slackened his horse's pace from a slow trot to a walk, as if desirous to suffer us to proceed, or at least to avoid passing us at a spot where the difficulty of doing so must have brought us very close to each other.

You know my old failing, Alan, and that I am always willing to attend to anything in preference to the individual who has for the time possession of the conversation.
Agreeably to this amiable propensity, I was internally speculating concerning the cause of the rider keeping aloof from us, when my companion, elevating his deep voice so suddenly and so sternly as at once to recall my wandering thoughts, exclaimed, 'In the name of the devil, young man, do you think that others have no better use for their time than you have, that you oblige me to repeat the same thing to you three times over?
Do you see, I say, yonder thing at a mile's distance, that looks like a finger-post, or rather like a gallows?
I would it had a dreaming fool hanging upon it, as an example to all meditative moon-calves!--Yon gibbet-looking pole will guide you to the bridge, where you must pass the large brook; then proceed straight forwards, till several roads divide at a cairn.

Plague on thee, thou art wandering again! It is indeed quite true that at this moment the horseman approached us, and my attention was again called to him as I made way to let him pass.
His whole exterior at once showed that he belonged to the Society of Friends, or, as the world and the world's law calls them, Quakers.
A strong and useful iron-grey galloway showed, by its sleek and good condition, that the merciful man was merciful to his beast.

His accoutrements were in the usual unostentatious but clean and servicable order which characterizes these sectaries.