he bought a
Swiss pattern rucksack, and set out on foot through the fells.

Incidentally, he saw scenery that gave him a new conception of the Old
Country. He astonished his new friends, the tourists, who volunteered to
show him the way over what they considered a difficult pass. To their
great astonishment the brown-faced stranger, who wore ordinary
tight-fitting American attire and rather pointed American shoes, went up
the mountainside apparently without an effort, and for the credit of the
clubs to which they belonged it was incumbent on them to keep pace with
him. They did not know that he had carried bags of flour and mining
tools over very much higher passes, close up to the limit of eternal
snow, but they did know that he set them a difficult pace, and after two
days' climbing they were relieved to part company with him.

A professional guide who overtook them recognized the capabilities of
the man when he noticed the way in which he lifted his feet and how he
set them down. This, the guide decided, was a man accustomed to walking
among the heather, but he was wrong; for it was the trick the bushman
learns when he plods through leagues of undergrowth and fallen branches,
or the tall grass of the swamps; and it is a memorable experience to
make a day's journey with such a man. For the first hour the thing seems
easy, as the pace is never forced, but the speed never slackens; and as
the hours go by the novice, who flounders and stumbles, grows horribly
weary of trying to keep up with the steady, persistent swing.

Wyllard had traveled since morning along a ridge of fells when he sat
down beside the water and contentedly filled his pipe. On the one hand,
a wall of crags high above was growing black against the evening light,
and the stream, clear as crystal, came boiling down among great
boulders. But the young man had wandered through many a grander and more
savage scene of rocky desolation, and it impressed him less than the
green valley in front of him. He had never seen anything like that
either on the Pacific slope or in Western Canada.

Early as it was in the season, the meadows between rock and water were
green as emerald, and the hedge-rows, just flushed with verdure, were
clipped and trimmed as if their owner loved them. There was not a dead
tree in the larch copse which dipped to the stream, and all its feathery
tassels were sprinkled with tiny flecks of crimson and wondrous green.
Great oaks dotted th