[Illustration: Dust cover] [Frontispiece: Her gaze followed Dick's pointing finger. _p._ 177] BEYOND THE HILLS BY MAYSEL JENKINSON FREDERICK WARNE & CO. LTD. LONDON AND NEW YORK COPYRIGHT FREDERICK WARNE & CO. LTD. LONDON _Printed in Great Britain_ To "MARIE" (_Founder of the Sunshine Guild_) who with kindly beckoning hand has led these and many other of my little Travellers towards the Enchanted Unknown Hills CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Beckoning Hills II. Great-Aunt Hewlett III. The Libation Man IV. Montague Francis de Vere V. The Other Side VI. The Prior VII. Lionel and Dorothy VIII. Matins and Breakfast IX. The Rose-Vicar X. An Encounter on the Hills XI. The Fight XII. "Fairest Masons" XIII. Exploring with Dick XIV. The Race XV. Half-Confessions XVI. The Derelict Car XVII. Awakening Beyond the Hills CHAPTER I THE BECKONING HILLS Just across the water they lay, such a little way beyond the opposite bank of the broad, golden river. If you sat on the old wall at the foot of the garden you could see the whole long range of them, so tantalizingly near, so altogether unattainable. True, you always had the river; you had merely to run down the hill, scramble across a meadow and through a gap in the hedge, and it was there, with all its many moods, awaiting you. True, also, a very little walk would bring you to the hilly forest country, but then both river and forest were part of the everyday life and how can you find romance or adventure except you go out to seek it in the Unknown? For it was the Unknown that attracted the three children, more especially the two elder ones. Not only the hills themselves in their shadowy, mystic beauty, but what lay beyond them--the great open, unexplored world where adventure would surely come leaping towards you. To find the open world, to know Adventure! For how could anything interesting ever happen if you just played in a garden or a paddock, or strained your eyes down the river or across the hills, simply wondering, wondering?