What are you saying to yourself?" he asked.

"Nothing to myself," she answered. "I'm saying, 'Oh, tree, give me of
thy strength!' the Eastern invocation."

He laughed, and wanted to know what rot that was; and again Beth was
jarred.

"You'll have no luck if you don't respect the big trees," she said.

"Oh, by Jove, if we wait for the big trees to make our luck, we shan't
have much!" he rejoined, picking up a pebble and firing it into the
Beck below.

They were on a narrow path now, about half-way down the bank, and
here, in a hollow, the chalybeate spring bubbled out, and was gathered
by a wooden spout into a slender stream, which fell on the ground,
where, in the course of time, it had made a basin for itself that was
always partly full. The water was icy cold, and somewhat the colour of
light on steel. Beth held the glass to the spout, rinsed it first,
then filled it, and offered it to Dan, but he dryly declined to take
it "Not for me, thank you," he said; "I never touch any medicinal
beastliness."

For the third time Beth was jarred. She threw the water on the ground,
refilled the glass, and drank. Dan saw he had made a mistake.

"I'll change my mind and have some too," he said, anxious to mollify
her.

Beth filled the glass again, and handed it to him in silence, but no
after-thought could atone for the discourtesy of his first refusal,
and she looked in another direction, not even troubling herself to see
whether he tried the water or not.

There was a rustic seat in the hollow of the bank, and he suggested
that they should sit there a while before they returned. Beth
acquiesced; and soon the sputter of the little spring bubbling into
its basin, the chitter of birds in the branches above, the sunbeams
filtering from behind through the leaves, the glint of the Beck below
slipping between its banks, soundless, to the sea, enthralled her.

"Isn't this lovely?" she ejaculated.

"Yes, it's very jolly--with you," he said.

"You wouldn't like it so well without me?" Beth asked.

"No, I should think not," he rejoined. "And you wouldn't like it as
well without me, I hope."

"No," Beth responded. "It makes it nicer having some one to share it."

"Now that's not quite kind," he answered in an injured tone. "Some one
is any one; and _I_ shouldn't be satisfied with anybody but you."

"Well, but I am satisfied with you," Beth answered dispassionately.

He took her hand, laid it in his own palm, and looked at