“I mind,” said Robert reminiscently, “when Mysie an’ me started on the pit-head, Mag Lindsay was awfu’ guid to Mysie; an’ I’ve kent her often sharin’ her piece wi’ wee Dicky Tamson, whiles when he had nane, if his mother happened to be on the fuddle for a day or twa.  There’s no a kinderhearted woman in Lowwood, mither, than Mag Lindsay.  She’d swear at Dicky a’ the time she was stappin’ her piece into him.  It was jist her wye, an’ I think she couldna help it.”

“Oh, ay, Mag’s bark is waur then her bite.  I ken that,” was the reply.  “An’ wi’ a’ her fauts a body canna help likin’ her.”

“Speakin’ of Mysie,” said Robert with caution, “I hinna seen her owre for a while surely.  Wull there be onything wrang?” and then, to hide the agitation he felt, “she used to come owre hame aboot twice a week, an’ I hinna seen her for a while.”

“Oh, there canna be onything wrang,” replied Nellie, “or we wad hae heard tell o’ it.  But t’ is time we were awa’ to oor beds, or we’ll no’ be able to rise in time the morn,” and rising as she spoke, she began to make preparations for retiring, and he withdrew to his room also.

Still, day after day, he hung about the moorland path, but no Mysie, so far as he knew, ever came past.  She had visited her parents only once since the games and her mother was struck by her subdued and thoughtful demeanor.  But nothing was said at the time.

Robert grew impatient, and began to roam nearer to Rundell House, in the hope of seeing her.  Always his thoughts were full of Mysie and the raging passion in his blood for her gave him no rest.  He loved to trace her name linked with his own, and then to obliterate it again, in case anyone would see it.  All day his thoughts were of her; and her sweet, shy smile that day of the games was nursed in memory till it grew to be a solace to his heart and its hunger.

He saw likenesses to her in everything, and even the call of the moor-birds awakened some memory of an incident of childhood, when Mysie and he had, with other children, played together on the moors.  Even the very words which she had spoken, or the way she had acted, or how she had looked, in cheap cotton frock and pinafore, were recalled by a familiar cry, or by the sudden discovery of a bog-flower in bloom.

It was a glorious afternoon in late July.  The hum of insect life seemed to flood the whole moor; the scent of mown hay and wild thyme, and late hawthorn blossom from the trees on the edge of the moor, was heavy in the air, and the sun was very hot, and still high in the heavens.  The hills that bordered the moor drowsed and brooded, like ancient gods, clothed in a lordly radiance that was slowly consuming them as they meditated upon their coming oblivion.

The heather gave promise, in the tiny purple buds that sprouted from the strong, rough stems, of the blaze of purple glory that would carpet the moors with magic in the coming days of autumn.  Yet there was a vague hint, in the too deep silence, and in the great clouds that were slowly drifting along the sky, of pent-up force merely awaiting the time to be set free to gallop across the moor in anger and destruction.  The clouds, too, were deeply red, with orange touches here and there, trailing into dark inky ragged edges.