possibly at his friend's expense. Vexed beyond measure, he
crushed his heel into the soft ground.

'That is a very striking thought,' said Mary Abbott, her look still
downcast. 'I shall never forget it.'

And she rose to move onward. They climbed in silence, the flank of the
mountain growing steeper.

'I should have brought you my old alpenstock,' jested Harvey. 'Go
slowly; we have plenty of time.'

'I like to exert myself. I feel so well, and it does me good!'

He ventured to look at her again. All her confusion had passed away;
she had the light of enjoyment in her eyes, and returned his look with
a frankness hitherto lacking.

'You must stay a second week. Alma won't let you go.'

'Go, I must. The two children can't be left longer at Mrs.
Langland's--it would be presuming upon her kindness.'

'I want to talk about them, but one hasn't much breath here. When we
get to the top----'

Last of all came a slippery scramble on broken stones, to where a
shapeless cairn rose above tree-tops, bare to the dazzling sky. As they
issued from the shelter of the wood, a breeze buffeted about them, but
only for a moment; then the air grew still, and nothing was audible but
a soft whispering among the boughs below. The larches circling this
stony height could not grow to their full stature; beaten, riven,
stunted, by fierce blasts from mountain or from wave, their trunks were
laden, and their branches thickly matted, with lichen so long and hoary
that it gave them an aspect of age incalculable. Harvey always looked
upon them with reverence, if not with awe.

In the sunny stillness their eyes wandered far and wide, around a vast
horizon. On two sides lay the sea; to the west, bounded only where it
met the blue sky above (though yonder line of cloud might perchance be
the hills of Wicklow); eastward, enfolded by the shores of a great bay,
with mountains on the far side, faintly visible through silvery vapour.
Northward rose a noble peak, dark, stern, beautiful in the swift fall
of curving rampart to the waves that broke at its foot; loftier by the
proximity of two summits, sharp-soaring like itself, but unable to vie
with it. Alone among the nearer mountains, this crest was veiled;
smitten by sea-gusts, it caught and held them, and churned them into
sunny cloudlets, which floated away in long fleecy rank, far athwart
the clear depths of sky. Farther inland, where the haze of the warm
morning hung and wavered, loomed at momen