d to herself that she would enjoy her visit. A healthy and
active young woman, the mere prospect of an open-air life gave her
pleasure. Also she liked the people. Mentally she epitomized each of
the inmates of the house. Lady Manorwater was all she had pictured
her--a dear, whimsical, untidy creature, with odd shreds of cleverness
and a heart of gold. She liked the boy Arthur, and the spectacled
people seemed harmless. Bertha she was prepared to adore, for behind
the languor and wit she saw a very kindly and capable young woman
fashioned after her own heart. But of all she liked Lord Manorwater
best. She knew that he had a great reputation, that he was said to be
incessantly laborious, and she had expected some one of her father's
type, prim, angular, and elderly. Instead she found a boyish person
whom she could scold, and with women reproof is the first stone in the
foundation of friendship. On Mr. Stocks she generously reserved her
judgment, fearing the fate of the hasty.

CHAPTER III

UPLAND WATERS

When Alice woke next morning the cool upland air was flooding through
the window, and a great dazzle of sunlight made the world glorious. She
dressed and ran out to the lawn, then past the loch right to the very
edge of the waste country. A high fragrance of heath and bog-myrtle was
in the wind, and the mouth grew cool as after long draughts of spring
water. Mists were crowding in the valleys, each bald mountain top shone
like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the white streamers of
morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge, and one tall heron
rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the
_plonk-plonk_ of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds
mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of the
full-uddered cows in the distant meadows. Abashed and enchanted, the
girl listened. It was an elfin land where the old witch voices of hill
and river were not silenced. With the wind in her hair she climbed the
slope again to the garden ground, where she found a solemn-eyed collie
sniffing the fragrant wind in his morning stroll.

Breakfast over, the forenoon hung heavy on her hands. It was Lady
Manorwater's custom to let her guests sit idle in the morning and follow
their own desire, but in the afternoon she would plan subtle and
far-reaching schemes of enjoyment. It was a common saying that in her
large good-nature she amused people regardless of their