“Just you wait and see, little lass,” says Robbie, with undisturbed good humor.

“You’ll slidder all the way down the fell, sure enough,” saves Liza.

“All right; just you get a cabbish-skrunt poultice ready for my broken shins,” says Robbie.

“I would scarce venture if I were you,” continues Liza, to the vast amusement of the bystanders.  “Wait till you’re a man, Robbie.”

The competitors—­there are six of them—­are now stationed; the signal is given, and away they go.

The fell is High Seat, and it is steep and rugged.  The first to round the “man” at the summit and reach the meadow again wins the prize.

Over stones, across streams, tearing through thickets, through belts of trees—­look how they go!  Now they are lost to the sight of the spectators below; now they are seen, and now they are hidden; now three of the six emerge near the top.

The excitement in the field is at full pitch.  Liza is beside herself with anxiety.

“It’s Robbie—­no, yes—­no—­egg him on, do; te-lick; te-smack.”

One man has rounded the summit, and two others follow him neck-and-neck.  They are coming down, jumping, leaping, flying.  They’re here, here, and it is—­yes, it is Robbie that leads!

“Well done!  Splendid!  Twelve minutes!  Well done!  Weel, weel, I oles do say ‘at ye hev a lang stroke o’ the grund, Robbie,” says Mattha.

“And what do you say?” says Robbie, panting, and pulling on his coat as he turns to Liza, who is trying to look absent and unconcerned.

“Ay!  Did you speak to me?  I say that perhaps you didn’t go round the ‘man’ at all.  You were always a bit of a cheat, you know.”

“Then here goes for cheating you.”  Robbie had caught Liza about the waist, and was drawing her to that rose-covered thicket.  She found he was holding her tight.  He was monstrously strong.  What ever was the good of trying to get away?

Two elderly women were amused spectators of Liza’s ineffectual struggles.

“I suppose you know they are to be wedded,” said one.

“I suppose so,” rejoined the other; “and I hear that Ralph is to let a bit of land to Robbie; he has given him a horse, I’m told.”

Matthew Branthwaite had returned to his station by Mrs. Ray’s chair.

“Whear’s Rotha?” says the old weaver.

“She said she would come and bring her father,” said Willy from the grass, where he still lay at his mother’s feet.

“It was bad manishment, my lad, to let the lass gang off agen with Sim to yon Fornside.”

Mattha is speaking with an insinuating smile.

“Could ye not keep her here?  Out upon tha for a good to nowt.”

Willy makes no reply to the weaver’s banter.

At that moment Rotha and her father are seen to enter the meadow by a gate at the lower end.

Ralph steps forward and welcomes the new-comers.