some little distance off among the gorse. She had raised a
light easel in front of her, and with papered board laid across it, was
preparing to paint the magnificent landscape of rock and moor which
stretched away in front of her. As I watched her I saw that she was
looking anxiously to right and left. Close by me a pool of water had
formed in a hollow. Dipping the cup of my pocket-flask into it, I
carried it across to her.

"Miss Cameron, I believe," said I. "I am your fellow-lodger. Upperton
is my name. We must introduce ourselves in these wilds if we are not to
be for ever strangers."

"Oh, then, you live also with Mrs. Adams!" she cried. "I had thought
that there were none but peasants in this strange place."

"I am a visitor, like yourself," I answered. "I am a student, and have
come for quiet and repose, which my studies demand."

"Quiet, indeed!" said she, glancing round at the vast circle of silent
moors, with the one tiny line of grey cottages which sloped down beneath
us.

"And yet not quiet enough," I answered, laughing, "for I have been forced
to move further into the fells for the absolute peace which I require."

"Have you, then, built a house upon the fells?" she asked, arching her
eyebrows.

"I have, and hope within a few days to occupy it."

"Ah, but that is _triste_," she cried. "And where is it, then, this
house which you have built?"

"It is over yonder," I answered. "See that stream which lies like a
silver band upon the distant moor? It is the Gaster Beck, and it runs
through Gaster Fell."

She started, and turned upon me her great dark, questioning eyes with a
look in which surprise, incredulity, and something akin to horror seemed
to be struggling for mastery.

"And you will live on the Gaster Fell?" she cried.

"So I have planned. But what do you know of Gaster Fell, Miss Cameron?"
I asked. "I had thought that you were a stranger in these parts."

"Indeed, I have never been here before," she answered. "But I have heard
my brother talk of these Yorkshire moors; and, if I mistake not, I have
heard him name this very one as the wildest and most savage of them all."

"Very likely," said I, carelessly. "It is indeed a dreary place."

"Then why live there?" she cried, eagerly. "Consider the loneliness, the
barrenness, the want of all comfort and of all aid, should aid be
needed."

"Aid! What aid should be needed on Gaster Fell?"

She looked down and shrugged her