ed them--panting.

'I beg your pardon!--but have you by chance seen another lady carrying
a bag like mine? I brought a friend with me to help gather this
stuff--but we seem to have missed each other on the top of Silver
How--and I can't imagine what's happened to her.'

The voice was exceedingly musical and refined--but there was a touch of
power in it--a curious note of authority. She stood, recovering breath
and looking at the young people with clear and penetrating eyes,
suddenly observant.

The Sarratts could only say that they had not come across any other
moss-gatherer on the road.

The strange lady sighed--but with a half humorous, half philosophical
lifting of the eyebrows.

'It was very stupid of me to miss her--but you really can't come to
grief on these fells in broad daylight. However, if you do meet her--a
lady with a sailor hat, and a blue jersey--will you tell her that I've
gone on to Ambleside?'

Sarratt politely assured her that they would look out for her companion.
He had never yet seen a grey-haired Englishwoman, of that age, carry so
heavy a load, and he liked both her pluck and her voice. She reminded
him of the French peasant women in whose farms he often lodged behind
the lines. She meanwhile was scrutinising him--the badge on his cap, and
the two buttons on his khaki sleeve.

'I think I know who you are,' she said, with a sudden smile. 'Aren't
you Mr. and Mrs. Sarratt? Sir William Farrell told me about you.' Then
she turned to the boy--'Go on, Jim. I'll come soon.'

A conversation followed on the mountain path, in which their new
acquaintance gave her name as Miss Hester Martin, living in a cottage on
the outskirts of Ambleside, a cousin and old friend of Sir William
Farrell; an old friend indeed, it seemed, of all the local residents;
absorbed in war-work of different kinds, and somewhere near sixty years
of age; but evidently neither too old nor too busy to have lost the
natural interest of a kindly spinster in a bride and bridegroom,
especially when the bridegroom was in khaki, and under orders for the
front. She promised, at once, to come and see Mrs. Sarratt, and George,
beholding in her a possible motherly friend for Nelly when he should be
far away, insisted that she should fix a day for her call before his
departure. Nelly added her smiles to his. Then, with a pleasant nod,
Miss Martin left them, refusing all their offers to help her with her
load. '"My strength is as the stren