and high-crowned felt hat with its ornamental band. This receded to the
back of his head as he grew hotter. The harp was slung from his
shoulder, the gilding looking tawdry in the open day. Twice during the
walk, once in a round clearing fringed with birches, and once in a
pine-glade, he stopped, put the harp down and played, sitting on a
felled tree. Hazel, quite intoxicated with excitement, danced between
the slender boles till her hair fell down and the long plait swung
against her shoulder.

'If folks came by, maybe they'd think I was a fairy!' she cried.

'Dunna kick about so!' said Abel, emerging from his abstraction. 'It
inna decent, now you're an 'ooman growd.'

'I'm not an 'ooman growd!' cried Hazel shrilly. 'I dunna want to be,
and I won't never be.'

The pine-tops bent in the wind like attentive heads, as gods, sitting
stately above, might nod thoughtfully over a human destiny. Someone, it
almost seemed, had heard and registered Hazel's cry, 'I'll never be an
'ooman,' assenting, sardonic.

They came to the quarry at the mountain; the deserted mounds and chasms
looked more desolate than ever in the spring world. Here and there the
leaves of a young tree lipped the grey-white steeps, as if wistfully
trying to love them, as a child tries to caress a forbidding parent.

They climbed round the larger heaps and skirted a precipitous place.

'I canna bear this place,' said Hazel; 'it's so drodsome.'