elf lightly to the ascent of the hill. It was a long
hill, that began with pasture fields, that were merged imperceptibly
into moorland, heather and furze. There were sheep, and donkeys and
goats on it, and a melancholy old kennel-horse or two, all feeding
peacefully. Amazon could not be accused in connection with them, so
Christian reflected, and prepared herself to rebut any such slander.
The rain was lighter, and the soaking mist that had all day filled the
valley, was slowly thinning, and revealing the mighty scroll of silver
that was the river, while the woods and hillsides came and went,
illusive as the grey hints of landscape in a Japanese water-colour.
But at the mature age of ten years, Christian cared for none of these
things. She saw the smoke from the Mount Music kitchen chimney
blending bluely with the mist, and thought with a momentary pang of
the birthday cake. She wondered if the Companions of Finn would so far
forget honour and fidelity as to devour it without her. She thought of
the ten candles that would gutter to their end, untended by the
heroine of the celebration; she wondered if Cottingham would tell
Papa, and if Papa would tell Mother (thus did this child of the
'eighties speak of her parents, the musical abbreviations of a later
day, "Mum," and "Dad," not having penetrated the remoteness in which
her home was placed); she also wondered if there would be a row about
her getting wet. All these things seemed but too probable, but she was
in for it now.

Near a ridge of the hill, in one of the shallow valleys that furrowed,
like ploughshares, its long slant, there was a dolmen, three huge
stones, with a fourth poised on it. Their grey brows rose over the
billows of bracken, and briers, laden with the promise of fruit, made
garlands for their ancient heads. Christian's straying advance brought
her along the lip of the little valley in which they reposed, and
quite suddenly there rose in her the conviction that her quest was
nearing success. She was of that mysteriously-gifted company to whom
the lairs of things lost are revealed. She "found things"; she was
"lucky." She was regarded by the servants as one enfolded in the cloak
of St. Anthony, that inestimable saint, whose mission it is to find
and protect the lost. It had become a household habit to appeal to
Christian when one of every day's most common losses occurred. She
would hearken; her little thin body would stiffen, like a dog setting
his