"But—but if it is like that—what am I to do for my people?"
"The best you can," said Käthchen, cheerfully.
It seemed an interminable drive. And then, in the afternoon, a premature darkness came slowly over; the mountains in the north gradually receded out of sight; and heavy, steady rain began to fall. The two girls sat huddled underneath one umbrella, listening to the pattering footfalls of the horses and the grinding of the wheels on the road; and when they ventured to peep forth from their shelter they beheld but the same monotonous features in the landscape: masses of wet rock and dark russet heather, black swamps, low and bare hills, and now and again the grey glimmer of a stream or tarn. It was a cheerless outlook; continually changing, and yet ever the same; and hour after hour the rain came down wearily. There was hardly a word said between those two: whither had fled Mary Stanley's dreams of a shining blue sea, a sunny coastline, and a happy peasantry busy in their fields and gardens, their white cottages radiant in the morning light? Käthchen, on the other hand, was inclined to laugh ruefully.
"Isn't it a good thing, Mary, that duty brought us here? If it had been pleasure, we should be calling ourselves awful fools."
But quite of a sudden this hopeless resignation vanished, and a wild excitement took its place.
"Miss Stanley," Mr. Purdie called to her, "we've come to the march."
"The what?"
"The march—the boundary of your estate."
Instantly she had the carriage stopped, and nothing would do but that she must get out and set foot on her own land: moreover, when Käthchen took down the umbrella, they found that the rain had ceased, and that the western skies were lightening somewhat.
"That is the march," said Mr. Purdie, pointing to a low, irregular, moss-grown wall—obviously a very ancient landmark; "and it goes right over the hill and down again to the Garra."