trees, high silver firs rising behind her, and a slender water that fell
from the rocks running at her pony's feet. Half-a-dozen yards were
between the charger's head and the pony's flanks. She waited for us to
march by, without attempting to conceal that we were the objects of her
inspection, and we in good easy swing of the feet gave her a look as we
lifted our hats. That look was to me like a net thrown into moonlighted
water: it brought nothing back but broken lights of a miraculous beauty.

Burning to catch an excuse for another look over my shoulder, I heard her
voice:

'Young English gentlemen!'

We turned sharp round.

It was she without a doubt who had addressed us: she spurred her pony to
meet us, stopped him, and said with the sweetest painful attempt at
accuracy in pronouncing a foreign tongue:

'I sthink you go a wrong way?'

Our hats flew off again, and bareheaded, I seized the reply before Temple
could speak.

'Is not this, may I ask you, the way to Sarkeld?'

She gathered up her knowledge of English deliberately.

'Yes, one goes to Sarkeld by sthis way here, but to-day goes everybody up
to our Bella Vista, and I entreat you do not miss it, for it is some-s-