at path of which I
spoke is one which I must tread alone."

"But this is morbid," said I. "Why should your lot, Miss Cameron, be
separate from that of my own sisters, or the thousand other young ladies
whom every season brings out into the world? But perhaps it is that you
have a fear and distrust of mankind. Marriage brings a risk as well as a
happiness."

"The risk would be with the man who married me," she cried. And then in
an instant, as though she had said too much, she sprang to her feet and
drew her mantle round her. "The night air is chill, Mr. Upperton," said
she, and so swept swiftly away, leaving me to muse over the strange words
which had fallen from her lips.

Clearly, it was time that I should go. I set my teeth and vowed that
another day should not have passed before I should have snapped this
newly formed tie and sought the lonely retreat which awaited me upon the
moors. Breakfast was hardly over in the morning before a peasant dragged
up to the door the rude hand-cart which was to convey my few personal
belongings to my new dwelling. My fellow-lodger had kept her room; and,
steeled as my mind was against her influence, I was yet conscious of a
little throb of disappointment that she should allow me to depart without
a word of farewell. My hand-cart with its load of books had already
started, and I, having shaken hands with Mrs. Adams, was about to follow
it, when there was a quick scurry of feet on the stair, and there she was
beside me all panting with her own haste.

"Then you go--you really go?" said she.

"My studies call me."

"And to Gaster Fell?" she asked.

"Yes; to the cottage which I have built there."

"And you will live alone there?"

"With my hundred companions who lie in that cart."

"Ah, books!" she cried, with a pretty shrug of her graceful shoulders.
"But you will make me a promise?"

"What is it?" I asked, in surprise.

"It is a small thing. You will not refuse me?"

"You have but to ask it."

She bent forward her beautiful face with an expression of the most
intense earnestness. "You will bolt your door at night?" said she; and
was gone ere I could say a word in answer to her extraordinary request.

It was a strange thing for me to find myself at last duly installed in my
lonely dwelling. For me, now, the horizon was bounded by the barren
circle of wiry, unprofitable grass, patched over with furze bushes and
scarred by the profusion of Nature's gaunt an