f that
proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week,
and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been
actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the
hills--but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial.

Mary clasped her hands delightedly.

'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And
now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water
in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere
winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining
like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a
line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark
Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'

'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top
of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of
the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you
that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old
mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little
clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I--well, child, I have done my
Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense
fog.'

'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on
foot, or shall I order the ponies?'

Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it
involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking.

'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared
herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed
with as a possible encumbrance.

This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fraeulein
was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so
Fraeulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room
to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that
morning, so she was perfectly free.

The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching
order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting
clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted
by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks
filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was al