et sauvages, ces collines! But I have flowers here. You will give me water, will you not? They will wither else.” She gathered her treasures in her lap, and a moment later we heard her light, springy footfall upon the stair.
So she had been out all night, this strange woman. What motive could have taken her from her snug room on to the bleak, wind-swept hills? Could it be merely the restlessness, the love of adventure of a young girl? Or was there, possibly, some deeper meaning in this nocturnal journey?
Deep as were the mysteries which my studies had taught me to solve, here was a human problem which for the moment at least was beyond my comprehension. I had walked out on the moor in the forenoon, and on my return, as I topped the brow that overlooks the little town, I saw my fellow-lodger some little distance off among the gorse. She had raised a light easel in front of her, and with papered board laid across it, was preparing to paint the magnificent landscape of rock and moor which stretched away in front of her. As I watched her I saw that she was looking anxiously to right and left. Close by me a pool of water had formed in a hollow. Dipping the cup of my pocket-flask into it, I carried it across to her.
“Miss Cameron, I believe,” said I. “I am your fellow-lodger. Upperton is my name.
We must introduce ourselves in these wilds if we are not to be for ever strangers.”
“Oh, then, you live also with Mrs. Adams!” she cried. “I had thought that there were none but peasants in this strange place.”
“I am a visitor, like yourself,” I answered. “I am a student, and have come for quiet and repose, which my studies demand.”
“Quiet, indeed!” said she, glancing round at the vast circle of silent moors, with the one tiny line of grey cottages which sloped down beneath us.
“And yet not quiet enough,” I answered, laughing, “for I have been forced to move further into the fells for the absolute peace which I require.”
“Have you, then, built a house upon the fells?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.