From this point the path rose steeply along the side of Great Gable, and as they mounted, the brisk freshness of the air revived the girl's languid spirits. Her lassitude and the feeling of helpless weakness which it engendered gradually gave place to a lively buoyancy. A new vigour entered her limbs. Gordon was walking a few paces ahead of her, the lanthorn swinging at his side on a shoulder-strap, and now and again he turned to help her over some rough portion of the track. But the way was almost as familiar to her as it was to him, and as they rose she needed his assistance less and less. The limpid clearness of the night, too, contributed in no small measure to this invigoration of her nature. The sky was unstained by a cloud, and glittered with a multitude of stars that shone like points of silver, so that the darkness below had a certain translucency. One seemed to see right into the heart of the night; at the same time, the landmarks and boundary walls in the valley--always productive of a sense of limit--were invisible, and the very mountains appeared but deeper shadows, a massing of the darkness, as it were, at separate spots, with here and there a gap from the faint glimmer of a snowdrift. The journey thus appealed to Kate's senses by its aspect of spaciousness and filled her with a new and strange feeling of liberty. The feeling penetrated to her mind and set in motion a train of thought which, in turn, gave back to it a fresh strength and colour. A consciousness of distinct relief forced itself into evidence as the main result to her of Gordon's chance visit to Wastdale Head, and obliterated to a great degree the shame of the disclosures which had paved the way for it. She was free alike from the brutal authority of Austen Hawke and from the irksome tyranny of Gordon's adoration; for the former's power rested upon its concealment and was killed by Gordon's discovery of its existence. Every trace of it would vanish when he recovered the three remaining letters. Of the means by which they were to be regained she took no more thought than Gordon at this time did himself. She was too absorbed by her newly-found freedom to foresee the possibility of danger there. Its forcible pre-occupation of her mind indeed blinded her to all ideas which hinted antagonism. She barely wasted a conjecture on the pretext which her companion would select for the breaking off of their engagement almost on the eve of their marriage. She just caught a dim glimpse of him taking the blame upon himself, and was restfully content to leave the exact solution in his hands. "I will spare you altogether," he had said; and she knew him well enough for complete assurance that he would keep his word. That she owed her liberty entirely to the generosity of her lover, she hardly felt at all now; from habit, she was incapable of accounting that quality of his at its true value. For a moment, it is true, at the outset of her interview with him in the farm-house, she