It was upon the morning of one of these sad and frowning days that a troop of horse, consisting of about a hundred and fifty men, well armed and mounted, took its way across a wide and somewhat barren plain about forty miles to the north-east of Bishop's Merton, encumbered with a good deal of baggage, and escorting two or three of the heavy carriages of the times, in which were some six or seven women. The prospect was wide and dreary, extending in a number of grey lines which afforded the eye no pleasing object to rest upon, except here and there a little mound or tumulus bearing on its top a clump of black-looking trees. In the distance was a range of low wood, apparently stunted and withered by the chilling blasts which swept over the plain; and a piece of water of some extent was seen glistening on the right, with the sandy road, along which the cavalcade took its way, winding between the mere and the wood. No hedgerows broke the wide extent, and the ground appeared to be somewhat marshy, for numerous ditches intersected it in every direction, and a large trench ran along on either side of the path, with here and there a small wooden bridge to cross from the sandy highway to the green turf of the plain. The progress of the party was not very quick, for, as we have said, the carriages were heavy, and their wheels, as well as those of the two or three carts and waggons, sank deep in the loose and shifting soil of the road. By the side of the foremost of the carriages generally rode a cavalier, with whom the reader is already acquainted under the name of Lord Walton, and ever and anon he laid his hand upon the heavy door, and spoke in at the window to his sister or to Arrah Neil, the latter seldom replying except by a monosyllable or a look. Annie Walton, however, conversed with him gaily and lightly; not that her heart was by any means at ease, or her bosom without its apprehensions; but she was well aware that her brother was grieved for all the inconvenience that she suffered, and for the danger to which she was exposed; and, with kindly and generous feeling towards him, she made as little as possible of every annoyance on the march, concealed all the fears that she might experience, and seemed unconscious of the perils of the way. She might not, it is true, deceive her brother as to her own sensations, for he knew her well, and understood her kindness and devotion; but still it made the burden lighter to him to hear no murmur, and to witness no terror.