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.