"I have no right to be here, I'm afraid; but I used to bathe in this pool a good deal, and I could not resist the thought of it this morning." "How did you find it out? I thought no one bathed here but myself." "How did I find it out? Do you know how long I have lived on Marshcotes Moor?" "I couldn't guess," said Miss Rotherson, demurely, seating herself on one end of the log. "Thirty odd years. Is it likely, now, that I should miss a stream as good as this one is?" "You are like the rest of them, Mr. Lomax. You're awfully proud of having lived here all your life, and you--not exactly look down on, but you--_pity_ us who come from the South." "Do I?" smiled Griff. "How do you know that?" "Oh, you do; you all do! I don't like your people up here; they're too _hard_." "Did you ever get to the heart of one of us? We're as soft as butter, once you smash through the rind." "But you never confess it when--when people want you to." Greta Rotherson blushed, as she spoke, in a vexed kind of way, and Griff knew, as well as could be, that she was thinking of the preacher. But he daren't so much as hint that he knew the state of affairs, though he was always jogging Gabriel's elbow, and striving to push the silly fellow nearer to his goal. "We are crossed in the grain, I fear. Don't be too hard on us, Miss Rotherson," he laughed. And so, what with one thing and another, they talked for half an hour, these two, seated one on each end of the warm pine-log. They laughed, and jested, and teased each other, from sheer vigour of youth and good spirits, until Griff looked at the sun, which was a reliable watch to him. "It is getting late," he said, rising and stretching his long legs. "Have I been keeping you from your bath all this time?" "You have, but it doesn't matter. I daren't ever risk it again, though, now that I know people intrude. Good-bye. When are you coming to have a pipe with father?" "As soon as I can, if you'll have me. Good-bye." "They are hard in a way," mused Greta, when he had gone, "but they're _grit_ somehow. Why on earth hasn't Gabriel a little of Mr. Lomax's easiness? It is so silly being in love with a man you have to give a helping hand to. And Gabriel isn't a bit sure yet whether I am a wile of the devil or merely an angel. Did I say I loved him? Well, I don't. He's stupid. I am going for a run on the moors instead of thinking about him." Griff strolled gently homeward across the moor, with the tingle of cold water on his skin and the morning wind fresh in his face. What was left a man to desire, he wondered? He opened his shoulders, his mouth, his nostrils, to the wind and the peat-reek, and watched the sun-rays dance across the moor. Cobwebs were slung, like fairy hammocks, from heather-bough to heather-bough; the peat was springy to the tread; a lark was vowing that he'd never grow tired of singing, and a moor-emperor moth, a dandy gallant in gorgeous raiment, flitted across his path.