Mrs Crocket’s boy, though he was only about three feet high, was a miracle of skill and discretion.  He used the machine, as the patent drag is called, in going down the hills with the utmost care.  He never forced the beast beyond a walk if there was the slightest rise in the ground; and as there was always a rise, the journey was slow.  But the three ladies enjoyed it thoroughly, and Mrs Trevelyan was in better spirits than she herself had thought to be possible for her in her present condition.  Most of us have recognised the fact that a dram of spirits will create, that a so-called nip of brandy will create hilarity, or, at least, alacrity, and that a glass of sherry will often ‘pick up’ and set in order the prostrate animal and mental faculties of the drinker.  But we are not sufficiently alive to the fact that copious draughts of fresh air—­of air fresh and unaccustomed—­will have precisely the same effect.  We do know that now and again it is very essential to ‘change the air’; but we generally consider that to do that with any chance of advantage, it is necessary to go far afield; and we think also that such change of the air is only needful when sickness of the body has come upon us, or when it threatens to come.  We are seldom aware that we may imbibe long potations of pleasure and healthy excitement without perhaps going out of our own county; that such potations are within a day’s journey of most of us; and that they are to be had for half-a-crown a head, all expenses told.  Mrs Trevelyan probably did not know that the cloud was lifted off her mind, and the load of her sorrow made light to her, by the special vigour of the air of the Moor; but she did know that she was enjoying herself, and that the world was pleasanter to her than it had been for months past.

When they had sat upon their hillocks, and eaten their sandwiches regretting that the basket of provisions had not been bigger and had drunk their sherry and water out of the little horn mug which Mrs Crocket had lent them, Nora started off across the moorland alone.  The horse had been left to be fed in Princetown, and they had walked back to a bush under which they had rashly left their basket of provender concealed.  It happened, however, that on that day there was no escaped felon about to watch what they had done, and the food and the drink had been found secure.  Nora had gone off, and as her sister and Priscilla sat leaning against their hillocks with their backs to the road, she could be seen standing now on one little eminence and now on another, thinking, doubtless, as she stood on the one how good it would be to be Lady Peterborough, and, as she stood on the other, how much better to be Mrs Hugh Stanbury.  Only before she could be Mrs Hugh Stanbury it would be necessary that Mr Hugh Stanbury should share her opinion and necessary also that he should be able to maintain a wife.  ’I should never do to be a very poor man’s wife,’ she said to herself; and remembered as she said it, that in reference to