After lunch Alice fled the house and sought her old refuge—­the hills.  There she would find the deep solitude for thought.  She was not broken-hearted, though she grieved now and again with a blind longing of regret.  But she was confused and shaken; the landmarks of her vision seemed to have been removed, and she had to face the grim narrowing-down of hopes which is the sternest trial for poor mortality.

Autumn’s hand was lying heavy on the hillsides.  Bracken was yellowing, heather passing from bloom, and the clumps of wild-wood taking the soft russet and purple of decline.  Faint odours of wood smoke seemed to flit over the moor, and the sharp lines of the hill fastnesses were drawn as with a graving-tool against the sky.  She resolved to go to the Midburn and climb up the cleft, for the place was still a centre of memory.  So she kept for a mile to the Etterick road, till she came in view of the little stone bridge where the highway spans the moorland waters.

There had been intruders in Paradise before her.  Broken bottles and scraps of paper were defacing the hill turf, and when she turned to get to the water’s edge she found the rushy coverts trampled on every side.  From somewhere among the trees came the sound of singing—­a silly music-hall catch.  It was a sharp surprise, and the girl, in horror at the profanation, was turning in all haste to leave.

But the Fates had prepared an adventure.  Three half-tipsy men came swinging down the slope, their arms linked together, and bowlers set rakishly on the backs of their heads.  They kept up the chorus of the song which was being sung elsewhere, and they suited their rolling gait to the measure.

“For it ain’t Maria,” came the tender melody; and the reassuring phrase was repeated a dozen times.  Then by ill-luck they caught sight of the astonished Alice, and dropping their musical efforts they hailed her familiarly.  Clearly they were the stragglers of some picnic from the town, the engaging type of gentleman who on such occasions is drunk by midday.  They were dressed in ill-fitting Sunday clothes, great flowers beamed from their button-holes, and after the fashion of their kind their waistcoats were unbuttoned for comfort.  The girl tried to go back by the way she had come, but to her horror she found that she was intercepted.  The three gentlemen commanded her retreat.

They seemed comparatively sober, so she tried entreaty.  “Please, let me pass,” she said pleasantly.  “I find I have taken the wrong road.”

“No, you haven’t, dearie,” said one of the men, who from a superior neatness of apparel might have been a clerk.  “You’ve come the right road, for you’ve met us.  And now you’re not going away.”  And he came forward with a protecting arm.

Alice, genuinely frightened, tried to cross the stream and escape by the other side.  But the crossing was difficult, and she slipped at the outset and wet her ankles.  One of the three lurched into the water after her, and withdrew with sundry oaths.