e must go ourselves; at least I must go."

"Do let me go, too," said Liza; "but where are you going?"

"To cross the fell to Stye Head."

"We can't go there, Rotha--two girls."

"What of that? But you need not go. It's eight miles across, and I may
run most of the way. They've been gone nearly an hour; they are out of
sight. I must make the short cut through the heather."

The prospect of the inevitable excitement of the adventure, amounting,
in Liza's mind, to a sensation equivalent to sport, prevailed over her
dread of the difficulties and dangers of a perilous mountain journey,
and she again begged to be permitted to go.

"Are you quite sure you wish it?" said Rotha, not without an
underlying reluctance to accept of her companionship. "It's a rugged
journey. We must walk under Glaramara." She spoke as though she had
the right of maturity of years to warn her friend against a hazardous
project.

Liza protested that nothing would please her but to go. She accepted
without a twinge the implication of superiority of will and physique
which the young daleswoman arrogated. If social advantages had counted
for anything, they must have been all in Liza's favor; but they were
less than nothing in the person of this ruddy girl against the natural
strength of the pale-faced young woman, the days of whose years
scarcely numbered more than her own.

"We must set off at once," said Rotha; "but first I must go to
Fornside."

To go round by the tailor's desolate cottage did not sensibly impede
their progress. Rotha had paid hurried visits daily to her forlorn
little home since the terrible night of the death of the master of
Shoulthwaite. She had done what she could to make the cheerless house
less cheerless. She had built a fire on the hearth and spread out her
father's tools on the table before the window at which he worked.
Nothing had tempted him to return. Each morning she found everything
exactly as she had left it the morning before.

When the girls reached the cottage, Liza instinctively dropped back.
Rotha's susceptible spirit perceived the restraint, and suffered from
the sentiment of dread which it implied.

"Stay here, then," she said, in reply to her companion's unspoken
reluctance to go farther. In less than a minute Rotha had returned.
Her eyes were wet.

"He is not here," she said, without other explanation. "Could we not
go up the fell?"

The girls turned towards the Fornside Fell on an errand which