d tents to watch the things done and listen to the
music and enjoy all the various beauty. Sometimes I had a glimpse of
Thorold; for many both of cadets and officers used to come and speak to
me and rally me on my seclusion, and endeavour to tempt me out of it.
Thorold did not that; he only looked at me, as if I were something to be
a little wondered at but wholly approved of. It was not a disagreeable
look to meet.

"I must have it out with you," he said one evening, when he had just a
minute to speak to me. "There is a whole world of things I don't
understand, and want to talk about. Let us go Saturday afternoon and
take a long walk up to 'Number Four'--do you like hills?"

"Yes."

"Then let us go up there Saturday--will you?"

And when Saturday came, we went. Preston luckily was not there; and
Dr. Sandford, also luckily, was gone to dine at the General's with his
brother. There were no more shadows on earth than there were clouds in
the sky, as we took our way across the plain and along the bank in
front of the officers' quarters looking north, and went out at the
gate. Then we left civilization and the world behind us, and plunged
into a wild mountain region; going up, by a track which few feet ever
used, the rough slope to "Number Four." Yet that a few feet used it
was plain.

"Do people come here to walk much?" I asked, as we slowly made our way
up.

"Nobody comes here--for anything."

"Somebody _goes_ here," I said. "This is a beaten path."

"Oh, there is a poor woodcutter's family at the top; they do travel up
and down occasionally."

"It is pretty," I said.

"It is pretty at the top; but we are a long way from that. Is it too
rough for you?"

"Not at all," I said. "I like it."

"You are a good walker for a Southern girl."

"Oh, but I have lived at the North; I am only Southern born."

Soon, however, he made me stop to rest. There was a good grey rock
under the shadow of the trees; Thorold placed me on that and threw
himself on the moss at my feet. We were up so high in the world that
the hills on the other side of the river rose beautifully before us
through the trees, and a sunny bit of the lower ground of the plain
looked like a bit of another world that we were leaving. It was a
sunny afternoon and a little hazy; every line softened, every colour
made richer, under the mellowing atmosphere.

"Now you can explain it all to me," said Thorold, as he threw himself
down. "You have walked too