A Cumberland dalesman takes the blame for a killing he did not do, to shield a man he has reason to hate, and the fells close round the lie. Hall Caine wrote his first novel in 1885 from Cumbrian speech and Cumbrian weather, and dedicated it to his fellow journalist John Lovell, who had believed in it when he did not. The trial is conducted twice, once in court and once by the neighbours, and the second verdict is the one that matters. Fifty-nine plates of snowbound heath, graveyard and spruce, after Constable and Friedrich, carry the same cold weather that closes round the lie.