She tossed back her head a little, and all those impossible little crumply curls caught by the evening breeze went dancing round her brow and ears. 'If you have any--any big thing, I will carry it for you, sir.' It was his turn to laugh now. 'Why, Lotty,' he said, 'I shouldn't wonder if I had to carry you before we get to camp.' 'Come,' she answered, with an uneasy glance at the west. She took his hand as if he'd been a blind man. 'Father said I was to lead you, sir.' 'But I don't think he meant it in so literal a sense, Lotty. I think I can see for quite half an hour yet.' He kept that warm hand in his, nevertheless. So on they went, chatting together gaily enough now, for she did not seem a bit afraid of her tall companion. 'I would have been here much sooner, you know, but Wallace followed me. Wallace is a very naughty boy sometimes, and father doesn't like him to be out of camp at nights.' 'And where is the young gentleman now?' 'Oh, I had to take him back, and that is what kept me.' It was getting early dark to-night, and one great star was already out in the east. Whinny Moor was beginning to look eerisome enough. The patches of furze that everywhere hugged the ground were like moving shapes of strange and uncanny antediluvian monsters, and here and there stood up the dark spectre of a stunted hawthorn-tree waving black arms in the wind as if to forbid their approach. Sometimes they had to creep quite sideways through the bushes of sturdy whins and bramble; sometimes the moor was more open, and here and there were little lakes or sedgy ponds of silver sheen, where black things swam or glided in and out among the rustling rushes. Flitter-mice darted over their heads or even between them, and from the forest now and then came the doleful cry of the great barn-owl. 'On the whole,' said young Blake, 'I'm glad you came, Lotty. I doubt if ever I could have made my way across this moor.' 'Nor through the forest yonder. Ah! the forest is much worse, Mr Blake.' 'Dark and dismal, I suppose?' 'It is dark; I don't know about dismal, Mr Blake. But I know all the road through this moor; because when things come to the station father often sends me for them.' 'At night?' 'Oh yes, often at night. Only, there is a little winding path through among the pine-trees, and one day Chops went in daylight and marked all the trees in white paint for me. But father thrashed him for it, because white paint is one of the show properties, and we mustn't waste the properties. But I cried for Chops.' 'And who is Chops, Lotty?' 'Oh, Chops is the fat boy; he is a property himself, but nobody could waste him.' 'No?' 'No; and Chops is fifteen, you know, and so good and so fond of me; but he is so fat that he can't look at you, only just blinks over his cheeks. But Chops is so kind to me--quite loves me. And so does Wallace. But I love Wallace better than anybody else, and everybody else loves Wallace.'