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 it’ll be the biggest trout that the laird will have in his basket,” The elder boy, who was bearing the heat and burden of the work, could only groan “Heather!” at intervals.  It seemed to be his one exclamation.

Now it happened that the two ragamuffins lifted their eyes and saw to their amazement a girl walking on the bank above them, a girl who smiled comrade-like on them and seemed in no way surprised.  They propped themselves on their elbows and stared.  “Heather!” they ejaculated in one breath.  Then they, too, grinned broadly, for it was impossible to resist so good-humoured an intruder.  She held her head high and walked like a queen, till a turn of the water hid her.  “It’s a wumman,” gasped the smaller boy.  “And she’s terrible bonny,” commented the more critical brother.  Then the two fell again to the quest of the great trout.

Meanwhile the girl pursued her way till she came to a fall where the bank needed warier climbing.  As she reached the top a little flushed and panting, she became conscious that the upland valley was not without inhabitants.  For, not six paces off, stood a man’s figure, his back turned towards her, and his mind apparently set on mending a piece of tackle.