All this was not done in a flash.  It took them some time to scale Dolly’s stubborn breast, and it took them another hour to reach Seat Sandal; and by the time they came to the iron gate in the fence, which at this point divides the two counties, the atmosphere had thickened ominously, and dark wreaths of fog were floating about and around them, whirled here and there by a boisterous wind which shrieked and roared at them with savage fury, as if it were the voice of some Titan monarch of the mountain protesting against this intrusion upon his domain.

‘I’m afraid you won’t see the Scottish hills,’ shouted Mary, holding on her little cloth hat.

She was obliged to shout at the top of her voice, though she was close to Mr. Hammond’s elbow, for that shrill screaming wind would have drowned the voice of a stentor.

‘Never mind the view,’ replied Hammond in the same fortissimo, ’but I really wish I hadn’t brought you up here.  If this fog should get any worse, it may be dangerous.’

‘The fog is sure to get worse,’ said Mary, in a brief lull of the hurly-burly, ’but there is no danger.  I know every inch of the hill, and I am not a bit afraid.  I can guide you, if you will trust me.’

‘My bravest of girls,’ he exclaimed, looking down at her.  ’Trust you!  Yes, I would trust my life to you—­my soul—­my honour—­secure in your purity and good faith.’

Never had eyes of living man or woman looked down upon her with such tenderness, such fervent love.  She looked up at him; looked with eyes which, at first bewildered, then grew bold, and lost themselves, as it were, in the dark grey depths of the eyes they met.  The savage wind, hustling and howling, blew her nearer to him, as a reed is blown against a rock.  Dark grey mists were rising round them like a sea; but had that ever-thickening, ever-darkening vapour been the sea itself, and death inevitable, Mary Haselden would have hardly cared.  For in this moment the one precious gift for which her soul had long been yearning had been freely given to her.  She knew all at once, that she was fondly loved by that one man whom she had chosen for her idol and her hero.

What matter that he was fortuneless, a nobody, with but the poorest chances of success in the world?  What if he must needs, only to win the bare means of existence, go to Australia and keep sheep, or to the Bed River valley and grow corn?  What if he must labour, as the peasants laboured on the sides of this rude hill?  Gladly would she go with him to a strange country, and keep his log cabin, and work for him, and share his toilsome life, rough or smooth.  No loss of social rank could lessen her pride in him, her belief in him.

They were standing side by side a little way from the edge of the sheer descent, below which the Bed Tarn showed black in a basin scooped out of the naked hill, like water held in the hollow of a giant’s hand.

‘Look,’ cried Mary, pointing downward, ’you must see the Red Tarn, the highest water in England?’