e
seemed to lie almost at their feet. The road and the open moorland
beyond, stretching to the encircling hills, came more clearly into sight
with every backward glance. Louise paused at last, breathless.

"I must sit down," she insisted. "It is too beautiful to hurry over."

"It is only a few steps farther," he told her, holding out his hand;
"just to where the path winds its way round the hill there. But perhaps
you are tired?"

"On the contrary," she assured him, "I never felt so vigorous in my
life. All the exercise I take, as a rule, is in Kensington Gardens; and
look!" She pointed downward to her absurd little shoes, and held out her
hand, "You will have to help me," she pleaded.

The last few steps were, indeed, almost precipitous. Fragments of rock,
protruding through the grass and bushes, served as steps. John moved on
a little ahead and pulled her easily up. Even the slight tightening of
his fingers seemed to raise her from her feet. She looked at him
wonderingly.

"How strong you are!"

"A matter of weight," he answered, smiling. "You are like a feather. You
walk as lightly as the fairies who come out on midsummer night's eve and
dance in circles around the gorse-bushes there."

"Is it the home of the fairies you are taking me to?" she asked. "If you
have discovered that, no wonder you find us ordinary women outside your
lives!"

He laughed.

"There are no fairies where we are going," he assured her.

They were on a rough-made road now, which turned abruptly to the right a
few yards ahead, skirting the side of a deep gorge. They took a few
steps further, and Louise stopped short with a cry of wonder.

Around the abrupt corner an entirely new perspective was revealed--a
little hamlet, built on a shoulder of the mountains; and on the right,
below a steep descent, a wide and sunny valley. It was like a tiny world
of its own, hidden in the bosom of the hills. There was a long line of
farm-buildings, built of gray stone and roofed with red tiles; there
were fifteen or twenty stacks; a quaint, white-washed house of
considerable size, almost covered on the southward side with creepers; a
row of cottages, and a gray-walled enclosure--stretching with its white
tombstones to the very brink of the descent--in the midst of which was
an ancient church, in ruins at the further end, partly rebuilt with the
stones of the hillside.

Louise looked around her, silent with wonder. A couple of sheep-dogs had
rushe