Fate had not been kind, but Anne found no fault with her heritage. Indeed, her temper was infectiously healthy. For years now Fortune had never piped to her, but that did not keep her from dancing. In the circumstances, that she should have been so good to look upon seemed almost hard.... The two passed on. It was a way Anthony had never gone, and, once in the thick of the woods, he could not have told where he was. Anne, apparently, knew her line backwards, for she climbed steadily, chattering all the time and taking odd paths and random grass-grown tracks with an unconscious confidence which was almost uncanny. More than once she turned to strike across some ground no foot had charted, each time unerringly to find the track upon the far side waiting to point them upward--sometimes gently, and sometimes with a sharp rise, but always upward. For all that, the pace his companion set was almost punishing, and Anthony was on the point of pleading a respite, when-- "Almost there now," panted Miss Alison. "Round to the right here, and----" The rest of the sentence was lost upon Anthony, and is of no consequence to us. As he was rounding the corner, he had turned to whistle for Patch. For two very excellent reasons the whistle was never delivered. The first was that the Sealyham was only five paces in rear. The second was that he was standing quite still in the middle of the path, wagging his tail apologetically. For a moment Anthony stared at him. Then he swung round, to find himself face to face with a broad natural bank, some thirty feet high. * * * * * When Valerie French, who had come by way of the finger-post, saw Patch dormant at the foot of the broad bank, she could have jumped for joy.