as food
and sleep; ten miles were refreshing; fifteen miles in an afternoon an
exaltation. She reached the moor beyond the policies, and, once past
this rushy wilderness, came to the Avelin-side and a single plank bridge
which she crossed lightly without a tremor. Then came the highway, and
then a long planting of firs, and last of all the dip of a rushing
stream pouring down from the hills in a lonely wooded hollow. The girl
loved to explore, and here was a field ripe for adventure.

Soon she grew flushed with the toil and the excitement; climbing the bed
of the stream was no child's play, for ugly corners had to be passed,
slippery rocks to be skirted, and many breakneck leaps to be effected.
Her spirits rose as the spray from little falls brushed her face and the
thick screen of the birches caught in her hair. When she reached a
vantage-rock and looked down on the chain of pools and rapids by which
she had come, a cry of delight broke from her lips. This was living,
this was the zest of life! The upland wind cooled her brow; she washed
her hands in a rocky pool and arranged her tangled tresses. What did
she care for Mr. Stocks or any man? He was far down on the lowlands
talking his pompous nonsense; she was on the hills with the sky above
her and the breeze of heaven around her, free, sovereign, the queen of
an airy land.

With fresh wonder she scrambled on till the trees began to grow sparser
and an upland valley opened in view. Now the burn was quiet, running in
long shining shallows and falling over little rocks into deep brown
pools where the trout darted. On either side rose the gates of the
valley--two craggy knolls each with a few trees on its face. Beyond was
a green lawnlike place with a great confusion of blue mountains hemmed
around its head. Here, if anywhere, primeval peace had found its
dwelling, and Alice, her eyes bright with pleasure, sat on a green
knoll, too rapt with the sight for word or movement.

Then very slowly, like an epicure lingering at a feast, she walked up
the banks of the burn, now high above a trough of rock, now down in a
green winding hollow. Suddenly she came on the spirits of the place in
the shape of two boys down on their faces groping among the stones of a
pool.

One was very small and tattered, one about sixteen; both were barefoot
and both were wet and excited. "Tam, ye stot, ye've let the muckle yin
aff again," groaned the smaller. "Oh, be canny, man! If we grip him
i