uty picked up a round stone as large as a cricket ball.

With difficulty I got Milly away without an exchange of missiles, and much
disgusted at my want of zeal and agility.

'Well, come along, cousin, I know an easy way by the river, when it's low,'
answered Milly. 'She's a brute--is not she?'

As we receded, we saw the girl slowly wending her way towards the old
thatched cottage, which showed its gable from the side of a little rugged
eminence embowered in spreading trees, and dangling and twirling from its
string on the end of her finger the key for which a battle had so nearly
been fought.

The stream was low enough to make our flank movement round the end of
the paling next it quite easy, and so we pursued our way, and Milly's
equanimity returned, and our ramble grew very pleasant again.

Our path lay by the river bank, and as we proceeded, the dwarf timber was
succeeded by grander trees, which crowded closer and taller, and, at last,
the scenery deepened into solemn forest, and a sudden sweep in the river
revealed the beautiful ruin of a steep old bridge, with the fragments of a
gate-house on the farther side.

'Oh, Milly darling!' I exclaimed, 'what a beautiful drawing this would
make! I should so like to make a sketch of it.'

'So it would. _Make_ a picture--_do_!--here's a stone that's pure and flat
to sit upon, and you look very tired. Do make it, and I'll sit by you.'

'Yes, Milly, I _am_ tired, a little, and I _will_ sit down; but we must
wait for another day to make the picture, for we have neither pencil
nor paper. But it is much too pretty to be lost; so let us come again
to-morrow.'

'To-morrow be hanged! you'll do it to-day, bury-me-wick, but you _shall_;
I'm wearying to see you make a picture, and I'll fetch your conundrums out
o' your drawer, for do't you shall.'

CHAPTER XXXIV

_ZAMIEL_

It was all vain my remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the
stepping-stones close by she could, by a short cut, reach the house, and
return with my pencils and block-book in a quarter of an hour. Away then,
with many a jump and fling, scampered Milly's queer white stockings and
navvy boots across the irregular and precarious stepping-stones, over which
I dared not follow her; so I was fain to return to the stone so 'pure
and flat,' on which I sat, enjoying the grand sylvan solitude, the dark
background and the grey bridge mid-way, so tall and slim, across whose
ruins a sunbeam glimmered, an