, but the lips were full and delicately
turned. She walked quickly with a good stride and her slight,
silvery skirts and rosy, silken jumper showed her figure clearly
enough--her round hips and firm, girlish bosom. She swung along--a
flash of joy on little twinkling feet that seemed hardly to touch
the ground.

Her eyes met his for a moment with a frank, trustful expression,
then she had passed. Waiting half a minute, Brendon turned to look
again. He heard her singing with all the light-heartedness of youth
and he caught a few notes as clear and cheerful as a grey bird's.
Then, still walking quickly, she dwindled into one bright spot upon
the moor, dipped into an undulation, and was gone--a creature of the
heath and wild lands whom it seemed impossible to imagine pent
within any dwelling.

The vision made Mark pensive, as sudden beauty will, and he wondered
about the girl. He guessed her to be a visitor--one of a party,
perhaps, possibly here for the day alone. He went no farther than to
guess that she must certainly be betrothed. Such an exquisite
creature seemed little likely to have escaped love. Indeed love and
a spirit of happiness were reflected from her eyes and in her song.
He speculated on her age and guessed she must be eighteen. He then,
by some twist of thought, considered his personal appearance. We are
all prone to put the best face possible upon such a matter, but
Brendon lived too much with hard facts to hoodwink himself on that
or any other subject. He was a well-modelled man of great physical
strength, and still agile and lithe for his age; but his hair was an
ugly straw colour and his clean-shorn, pale face lacked any sort of
distinction save an indication of moral purpose, character, and
pugnacity. It was a face well suited to his own requirements, for he
could disguise it easily; but it was not a face calculated to charm
or challenge any woman--a fact he knew well enough.

Tramping forward now, the detective came to a great crater that
gaped on the hillside and stood above the dead quarry workings of
Foggintor. Underneath him opened a cavity with sides two hundred
feet high. Its peaks and precipices fell, here by rough, giant
steps, here stark and sheer over broad faces of granite, where only
weeds and saplings of mountain ash and thorn could find a foothold.
The bottom was one vast litter of stone and fern, where foxgloves
nodded above the masses of debris and wild things made their homes.
Wat