Wych Hazel had time to meditate. Doubtless she once more scanned the rocks by which inexplicably she had let herself down to her present position; but in vain, no strength or agility of hers, unaided, could avail to get up them again. Indeed it was not easy to see how aid could mend the matter. Miss Hazel left considering the question. It was a wild place she was in, and wild things suited it; the very birds, unaccustomed to disturbance, hopped near her and eyed her out of their bright eyes. If they could have given somewhat of their practical sageness to the human creature they were watching! Wych Hazel had very little of it, and just then, in truth, would have chosen their wings instead. She did not, even now, in their innocent, busy manners, read how much else they had that she lacked; though she looked at them and at all the other wild things. The tree branches that stretched as they listed, no axe coming ever upon their freedom; the moss and lichens that flourished in luxuriant beds and pastures, not breathed on by even a naturalist's breath; the rocks that they had clothed for ages, no one disturbing. The very cloud shadows that now and then swept over the ravine and the hillside, meeting nothing less free than themselves, scarce anything less noiseless, seemed to assert the whole scene as Nature's own. Since the days of the red men nothing but cloud shadows had travelled there; the nineteenth century had made no entrance, no wood-cutter had lifted his axe in the forest; the mountain streams, that you might hear soft rushing in the distance, did not work but their own in their citadel of the hills. Wych Hazel had time to consider it all, and to watch more than one shadow walk slowly from end to end of the long stretch of the mountain valley, before she heard anything else than the wild noise of leaf and water and bird. At last there came something more definite, in the sounds of leaves and branches over her head; and then with certainly a little difficulty, Mr. Falkirk let himself down to her standing place. To say that Mr. Falkirk looked in a gratified state of mind would be to strain the truth; though his thick eyebrows were unruffled.

'How did you get here, Wych?' was his undoubtedly serious inquiry.

'Oh!' she said, jumping up, and checking her own wild murmurs of song,—'My dear Mr. Falkirk, how did you? What is the last news from civilization?' She looked wild wood enough, with the pink wreath round her hat and her curls twisted round the wind's fingers.

'But what did you come here for?'

'It's a pleasant place, sir—Mr. Rollo says. I was going to propose that you and I should have a joint summer house here, with strawberries and cream. Mr. Falkirk, haven't you a bun in your pocket?'

At this moment, and in the most matter-of-fact manner, presented himself her red squirrel friend, arriving from nobody knew where; and bringing not only himself but a little basket in which appeared—precisely—biscuits and strawberries. Silently all this presented itself. Wych Hazel's cheeks rivalled the strawberries for about a minute, but whether from stirred vanity or vexation it was hard to tell.

'Mr. Falkirk!' she cried, 'are all the rest of the staff coming? Here is the Commissary—is the Quarter-master behind, in the bushes?'

'I have no doubt we shall find him,' said Mr. Falkirk, dryly.
'How did you get into this bird's nest, child?'

'She was drawn here, sir,—by a red squirrel.'

'I was not drawn!—Mr. Falkirk, what are they about up there, besides lamenting my absence.'