way along the white road which skirted the woods, and came to the other
road which led at right angles to Dorsham, that the real beauty of the
place they had come to burst upon them.

Then, "Oh!" they gasped. "Oh! oh! Cousin Charlotte, how perfectly lovely!
We did not think it would be a bit like this."

Angela alone did not speak; she gazed, and shivered as she gazed.
She was too awed by the rugged wildness to be able to find any words--awed
and rather frightened. In the beautiful evening light of the summer's day
there lay before them an immense stretch of wild and rugged moorland,
sloping down on either side till it met a winding silver streak at the
bottom of the valley, and rolling upwards, away and away, rising and
dipping, with every here and there rough boulders and tors, single or in
groups, standing upon its brown bosom like rocks out of a brown sea,
until in the distance high rock-crowned hills bounded and closed it in.

Then would the eye travel from the wilder beauty back to rest on the
gleaming, gliding river in its rocky bed, and the group of little houses
which stood about so irregularly as to give the impression that they had
been dropped down promiscuously and allowed to remain as they fell; while
close about each house were large gardens snatched from the wealth of
wildness outside and enclosed within sturdy walls, as though to protect
them from the encroaching brown sea outside.

"Oh, Cousin Charlotte," gasped Angela, "aren't you afraid to live here?
It looks so--so wild and--and sad?"

Cousin Charlotte smiled. "Oh no," she cried, "it is not as lonely as it
looks. There is quite a village just on beyond, but you cannot see it
from here." Then noticing the look on Angela's face, "You will not be
afraid, will you, children?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh no," said Esther, replying for them all. "I am sure we shall like it,
Cousin Charlotte. I don't think it is as lonely as a wood really, because
here you can look all about you, and can see if any one is coming.
Angela is tired, I expect, and I think every place looks rather sad when
night is coming on. I think she will like it soon, when she is more used
to it."

"The village looks more lonely than it is really," said Cousin Charlotte.
"From here it seems as though we are quite unprotected, but when we are at
home that feeling will be gone. It seems then as though the moor is
protecting us. There are other villages just beyond us in each
d