ture days.
The air was bland, yet exquisitely fresh; scented from innumerable
sources in field and heath and wood. When the lane gave upon open
ground, they made a pause to look back. Beneath them lay the little
grey town, and beyond it the grassy cliffs, curving about a blue bay.
Near by rose the craggy slopes of a bare hill, and beyond it, a few
miles to the north, two lofty peaks, wreathed against the cloudless
heaven with rosy mist.

'Sure it won't be too much for you?' said Harvey looking upwards to the
wooded height.

'I feel equal to anything,' answered his companion brightly. 'This air
has given me new life.'

There was a faint colour on her cheeks, and for the first time Harvey
caught an expression which reminded him of the face he had known years
ago, when Mrs. Abbott looked upon life much as Alma did now.

They entered upon a rising heath, green with mosses where the moisture
of a hidden stream drew downwards, brown with dead bracken on dry
slopes. Just above was a great thicket of flowering gorse; a blaze of
colour, pure, aerial, as that of the sky which illumined it. Through
this they made their way, then dropped into a green nook of pasture,
among sheep that raised their heads distrustfully, and loud-bleating
lambs, each running to its mother.

'If you can scale this wall, it will save us a quarter of an hour.'

'If you can, I can,' was the laughing reply.

Protruding boulders made it an easy clamber. They were then at the base
of Cam Bodvean, and before them rose steep mountain glades. Mrs. Abbott
gazed upwards with unspoken delight.

'There are no paths,' said Harvey. 'It's honest woodland. Some day it
will be laid out with roads and iron benches, with finger-posts, "To
the summit".'

'You think so?'

'Why, of course. It's the destiny of every beautiful spot in Britain.
There'll be a pier down yonder, and a switchback railway, and leagues
of lodging-houses, and brass bands.'

'Let us hope we shall be dead.'

'Yes--but those who come after us? What sort of a world will it be for
Hugh? I often think I should be wrong if I taught him to see life as I
do. Isn't it only preparing misery for him? I ought to make him delight
in piers, and nigger minstrels, and switchbacks. A man should belong to
his time.'

'But a man helps to make his time,' replied Mary Abbott.

'True. You are hopeful, are you?'

'I try very hard to be. What use am I, if I don't put a few thoughts
into children's heads wh