As she leaned over a pool of clear brown water in a little burn, where scented ferns dipped and great rocks of brake and heather shadowed, she saw her face and figure mirrored in every colour and line.  Her extraordinary prettiness delighted her, and then she laughed at her own vanity.  A lady of the pools, with the dark eyes and red-gold hair of the north, surely a creature of dawn and the blue sky, and born for no dreary self-communings.  She returned, with her eyes clear and something like laughter in her heart.  To-morrow she should see him, to-morrow!

It was the utter burning silence of midday, when the man who toils loses the skin of his face, and the man who rests tastes the joys of deep leisure.  The blue, airless sky, the level hilltops, the straight lines of glen, the treeless horizon of the moors—­no sharp ridge or cliff caught the tired eye, only an even, sleep-lulled harmony.  Five very hungry, thirsty, and wearied men lay in the shadow above the Pool of Ness, and prayed heaven for luncheon.

Lewis and George, Wratislaw and Arthur Mordaunt were there, and Doctor Gracey, who loved a day on the hills.  The keepers sat farther up the slope smoking their master’s tobacco—­sure sign of a well-spent morning.  For the party had been on the moors by eight, and for five burning hours had tramped the heather.  All wore light and airy shooting-clothes save the doctor, who had merely buckled gaiters over his professional black trousers.  All were burned to a tawny brown, and all lay in different attitudes of gasping ease.  Few things so clearly proclaim a man’s past as his posture when lounging.  Arthur and Wratislaw lay, like townsmen, prone on their faces with limbs rigidly straight.  Lewis and George—­old campaigners both—­lay a little on the side, arms lying loosely, and knees a little bent.  But one and all gasped, and swore softly at the weather.

“Turn round, Tommy,” said George, glancing up, “or you’ll get sunstroke at the back of the neck.  I’ve had it twice, so I ought to know.  You want to wet your handkerchief and put it below your cap.  Why don’t you wear a deer-stalker instead of that hideous jockey thing?  Feugh, I am warm and cross and thirsty.  Lewis, I’ll give your aunt five minutes, and then I shall go down and drink that pool dry.”

Lewis sat up and watched the narrow ribbon of road which coiled up the glen to the pool’s edge.  He only saw some hundreds of yards down it, but the prospect served to convince him that his erratic aunt was late.

“If my wishes had any effect,” said George, “at this moment I should be having iced champagne.”  And he cast a longing eye to the hampers.

“You won’t get any,” said Lewis.  “We are not sybarites in this glen, and our drinks are the drinks of simple folk.  Do you remember Cranstoun?  I once went stalking with him, and we had pate-de-foie-gras for luncheon away up on the side of a rugged mountain.  That sort of thing sets my teeth on edge.”