more, very nearly the same operation had to be gone through;
then a few plunging and scrambling steps placed them in a
clear path, and the sound of the waters of the fall told them
which way to take. With that, Rollo lifted his hat again
gravely and fell back behind the others. Wrapping herself in
her mood as if it had been a veil, Wych Hazel likewise bent
her head--it might have been to both gentlemen; but then she
sped forward at a rate which she knew one could not and the
other would not follow, and disappeared among the leaves like
a frightened partridge.

What was she like when they reached the party on the height?
With no token of her adventures but the pink wreath round her
hat and the pink flush under it, Miss Hazel sat there _à la
reine_; Mr. Kingsland at her feet, a circle of standing
admirers on all sides; her own immediate attention
concentrated on a thorn in one of her wee fingers. Less
speedily Mr. Falkirk had followed her and now stood at the
back of the group, silent and undemonstrative. Rollo had gone
another way and was not any longer of the party.


CHAPTER VII.

SMOKE.


To Chickaree by the stage was a two-days' journey. The first
day presented nothing remarkable. Rollo was their only fellow
traveller whom they knew; and he did nothing to lighten the