to Mr. Hammond's elbow, for that shrill screaming wind would have
drowned the voice of a stentor.

'Never mind the view,' replied Hammond in the same fortissimo, 'but I
really wish I hadn't brought you up here. If this fog should get any
worse, it may be dangerous.'

'The fog is sure to get worse,' said Mary, in a brief lull of the
hurly-burly, 'but there is no danger. I know every inch of the hill, and
I am not a bit afraid. I can guide you, if you will trust me.'

'My bravest of girls,' he exclaimed, looking down at her. 'Trust you!
Yes, I would trust my life to you--my soul--my honour--secure in your
purity and good faith.'

Never had eyes of living man or woman looked down upon her with such
tenderness, such fervent love. She looked up at him; looked with eyes
which, at first bewildered, then grew bold, and lost themselves, as it
were, in the dark grey depths of the eyes they met. The savage wind,
hustling and howling, blew her nearer to him, as a reed is blown against
a rock. Dark grey mists were rising round them like a sea; but had that
ever-thickening, ever-darkening vapour been the sea itself, and death
inevitable, Mary Haselden would have hardly cared. For in this moment
the one precious gift for which her soul had long been yearning had been
freely given to her. She knew all at once, that she was fondly loved by
that one man whom she had chosen for her idol and her hero.

What matter that he was fortuneless, a nobody, with but the poorest
chances of success in the world? What if he must needs, only to win the
bare means of existence, go to Australia and keep sheep, or to the Bed
River valley and grow corn? What if he must labour, as the peasants
laboured on the sides of this rude hill? Gladly would she go with him to
a strange country, and keep his log cabin, and work for him, and share
his toilsome life, rough or smooth. No loss of social rank could lessen
her pride in him, her belief in him.

They were standing side by side a little way from the edge of the sheer
descent, below which the Bed Tarn showed black in a basin scooped out of
the naked hill, like water held in the hollow of a giant's hand.

'Look,' cried Mary, pointing downward, 'you must see the Red Tarn, the
highest water in England?'

But just at this moment there came a blast which shook even Hammond's
strong frame, and with a cry of fear he snatched Mary in his arms and
carried her away from the edge of the hill. He folded her in his a