the moor, "if you stay here too long chattering
with me. Do you know what o'clock it is? I know always, whether the sun
is out or in. You need show no gold watch to me."

"Oh, that comes of living in a draught all day. The out-door people grow
too wise. What do you see about ten miles off? It must be ten miles to
that hill."

"That hill is scarcely five miles off, and what I see is not half of
that. I brought you up here to be quite safe. Maunder's eyes are better
than mine. But he will not see us, for another mile, if you cover your
grand waistcoat, because we are in the shadows. Slip down into the gill
again, and keep below the edge of it, and go home as fast as possible."

Lancelot felt inclined to do as he was told, and keep to safe obscurity.
The long uncomfortable loneliness of prospect, and dim airy distance
of the sinking sun, and deeply silent emptiness of hollows, where great
shadows began to crawl--in the waning of the day, and so far away from
home--all these united to impress upon the boy a spiritual influence,
whose bodily expression would be the appearance of a clean pair of
heels. But, to meet this sensible impulse, there arose the stubborn
nature of his race, which hated to be told to do anything, and the
dignity of his new-born love--such as it was--and the thought of looking
small.

"Why should I go?" he said. "I will meet them, and tell them that I am
their landlord, and have a right to know all about them. My grandfather
never ran away from anybody. And they have got a donkey with them."

"They will have two, if you stop," cried Insie, although she admired his
spirit. "My father is a very quiet man. But Maunder would take you by
the throat and cast you down into the beck."

"I should like to see him try to do it. I am not so very strong, but I
am active as a cat. I have no idea of being threatened."

"Then will you be coaxed? I do implore you, for my sake, to go, or it
will be too late. Never, never, will you see me again, unless you do
what I beseech of you."

"I will not stir one peg, unless you put your arms round my neck and
kiss me, and say that you will never have anybody else."

Insie blushed deeply, and her bright eyes flashed with passion not of
loving kind. But it went to her heart that he was brave, and that he
loved her truly. She flung her comely arms round his neck, and touched
her rosy lips with his; and before he could clasp her she was gone, with
no more comfort than thes