gth of ten,"' she said with a flash
of fun in her eyes--'But I won't go on with the quotation. Good-bye.'

George and Nelly went on towards a spot above a wood in front of them to
which she had directed them, as a good point to rest and lunch. She,
meanwhile, pursued her way towards Ambleside, her thoughts much more
occupied with the young couple than with her lost companion. The little
thing was a beauty, certainly. Easy to see what had attracted William
Farrell! An uncommon type--and a very artistic type; none of your
milk-maids. She supposed before long William would be proposing to draw
her--hm!--with the husband away? It was to be hoped some watch-dog would
be left. William was a good fellow--no real malice in him--had never
_meant_ to injure anybody, that she knew of--but--

Miss Martin's cogitations however went no farther in exploring that
'but.' She was really very fond of her cousin William, who bore an
amount of discipline from her that no one else dared to apply to the
owner of Carton. Tragic, that he couldn't fight! That would have brought
out all there was in him.

CHAPTER IV

'Glorious!'

Nelly Sarratt stood lost in the beauty of the spectacle commanded by Sir
William Farrell's cottage. It was placed in a by-road on the western
side of Loughrigg, that smallest of real mountains, beloved of poets and
wanderers. The ground dropped sharply below it to a small lake or tarn,
its green banks fringed with wood, while on the further side the purple
crag and noble head of Wetherlam rose out of sunlit mist,--thereby
indefinitely heightened--into a pearl and azure sky. To the north also,
a splendid wilderness of fells, near and far; with the Pikes and Bowfell
leading the host. White mists--radiant mists--perpetually changing, made
a magic interweaving of fell with fell, of mountain with sky. Every tint
of blue and purple, of amethyst and sapphire lay melted in the chalice
carved out by the lake and its guardian mountains. Every line of that
chalice was harmonious as though each mountain and valley filled its
place consciously, in a living order; and in the grandeur of the whole
there was no terror, no hint of a world hostile and inaccessible to man,
as in the Alps and the Rockies.

'These mountains are one's friends,' said Farrell, smiling as he stood
beside Nelly, pointing out the various peaks by name. 'If you know them
only a little, you can trust yourself to them, at any hour of the day or
night.