ave arranged something to amuse you; and then, as I know the
mountains, I can indicate an interesting tour. You might miss much if
you didn't know where to go and what you ought to see."

Festing promised, and she left him and went back to the house with a
thoughtful smile that hinted that she had begun to make an amusing plan.
Muriel was romantic and rather fond of managing her friends' affairs for
their good.

CHAPTER VII

HELEN TAKES THE LEAD

Festing was glad to sit down when he reached the bottom of a chasm that
divided the summits of two towering fells. He had crossed the higher of
the two without much trouble except for a laborious scramble over large,
rough stones, but the ascent of the other threatened to be difficult.
It rose in front, a wall of splintered crag, seamed by deep gullies,
for the strata was tilted up nearly perpendicular. All the gullies were
climbed by expert mountaineers, but this needed a party and a rope, and
the other way, round the shoulder of the great rock, was almost as hard.
Festing knew the easiest plan was to descend a neighboring hollow, from
which he would find a steep path to the top.

Lighting his pipe, he glanced at his watch. It was three o'clock in the
afternoon, and having been on his feet since breakfast, he felt tired.
The nails he had had driven into his light American boots hurt his feet,
and the boots were much the worse for the last few days' wear. Muriel
had carefully planned the trip, and then delayed his start by a week
because she wanted to take him to a tennis party. Since he could not
play tennis much, Festing did not see why she had done so, but agreed
when she insisted.

So far, he had followed her instructions and admitted that she had
directed him well, because it was hard to imagine there was anything in
England finer than the country he had seen. The mountains had not the
majestic grandeur of the British Columbian ranges, but they were wild
enough, and pierced by dales steeped in sylvan beauty. The chasm in
which he now rested had an impressive ruggedness.

Blinks of sunshine touched the lower face of the crag, and in their
track the dark rock glittered with a steely luster, but trails of mist
rolled among the crannies above. Below, a precipitous slope of small
stones that the dalesmen call a scree ran down to a hollow strewn with
broken rocks, and across this he could distinguish the blurred flat top
of another height. The mountain dropped to a d