as she could, and perhaps
enjoyed the scenery, if anyone did. Mr. Falkirk gave no sign
of enjoyment, mental or physical, and Mr. Kingsland would
certainly have been asleep, but for losing sight of the brown
veil--and of possible something it might do. Yet now and then
there were fine reaches for the eye, beautiful knolly
indications of a change of surface, which gave picturesque
lights and shades on their soft green. Or a lonely valley,
with smooth fields and labourers at work, tufty clumps of
vegetation, and a line of soft willows by a watercourse,
varied the picture. Then the ascent began in good earnest, and
trees shut it in, and there was everywhere the wild leafy
smell of the woods. Night began to shut it in too, for the sun
was early hidden from the travellers; the gloom, or the
fatigue of the way, gathered inside the coach as well, on all
except the occupant of the middle seat. Some time before this
his ease-seeking had displayed itself in a new way; and
letting himself out of the coach door he had kept up a
progress of his own by the side of the vehicle, which quite
distanced its slow and toilsome method of advance. For Rollo
was not only getting on with a light step up the road, but
making acquaintance with every foot of it; gathering flowers,
pocketing stones, and finding time to fling others, which
rebounded with a racketty hop, skip and jump, down the side of
the deep ravine on the edge of which the way was coasting.
Then making up for his delay by a mode of locomotion which
seemed to speak him kindred to the squirrels, he swung himself
over difficult places by the help of hanging branches of
trees, and bounded from rock to rock, till he was again far
ahead of the horses, and of the road too, lost out of sight in
another direction. Now and then a few rich notes of a German
air came down, or up, to the coach tantalizingly. Certainly
Mr. Rollo was enjoying himself; and it was made more
indubitably certain to the poor plodders along inside the
coach, by the faint fumes of an excellent cigar which 'whiles'
made themselves perceptible.

Now to say the truth, it was all tantalizing to Wych Hazel. In
the first place she was, as she had said, 'cramped to death,'
physically and mentally,--both parts of her composition just
spoiling for a fight; and whereas she had hitherto kept her
face well out of the window, now she drew it resolutely
within, for with somebody to look at, it did not suit Miss
Hazel's ideas to