He looked at me and coloured faintly. “Then I’m to say you won’t be home till dinner-time?” he asked, speaking directly to his sister. Katherine hesitated. “Shall he say that?” “Let him say what he likes,” I returned, shortly. We moved on together, and I did not look back, though Katherine did, more than once. “I’ll make no more arrangements with your brother,” I remarked. Katherine was silent. “Perhaps we should come another day instead?” she began presently, and in a hesitating way. “You mean you are going to give in to him?” I said, making up my mind that there should be no other day, so far as I was concerned. She was again silent, and meanwhile we continued to walk on. I could see she was uncertain as to what she ought to do, that she did not want to disappoint me, and that, on the other hand, she was not sure about Gerald. “He’s offended at something,” she began. “He takes offence very easily.... He thinks you didn’t want him.” “Why should he think that?” “I don’t know.... But it is something of that sort, I’m sure.” I was going to say that I did not care a straw what he thought, but checked myself. “He didn’t appear to me to be offended,” I replied. “It was simply that he thought it too much fag.” “You don’t know him,” said Katherine. And we continued to trudge along, our feet white with dust. It really _was_ very hot, and I was glad I had so little clothing on――merely a light cotton tennis-shirt under my jacket. When we reached a low grey bridge that spanned a shallow mountain stream we branched inland. This was the Bloody Bridge, I told Katherine, and a religious massacre had once taken place here. I pointed out the remains of an old church, with its fallen tombs, and after resting for a few minutes we began to climb the valley, which was the walk I had proposed to take them. This valley was wonderfully beautiful, widening out gradually, and gradually ascending; on each side of it steep dark mountains, covered with heather, and grass, and gorse, and hidden streams which flowed into the broader, deeper stream we followed. The colouring was rich and splendid――dull gold, bronze, dark green and even black, with the brighter purple of the heather woven through it, and the long, narrow, pale, silver streak of water, glittering and gleaming, far, far up, till in the end it was lost over the edge of a higher valley which crossed ours at right angles. “These are the Mourne Mountains?” Katherine asked gazing up at them. “I’ve seen them from the Isle of Man. On a clear day you can make them out quite distinctly.”