They were out of the wind. The heavy fragrance of gorse was in the hot air. It was a well-hidden spot, and somewhat weird, a haunted kind of place. The ruins of a miner's cot were close by, and what had been its floor was then a mass of bracken. The stones were covered with flowering saxifrage. There was a scrubby brake here and there, composed of a few dwarf trees, rowan and oaks, only a few feet high, ancient enough but small, because their roots obtained little nutriment from the rock-bedded peat. Their branches twisted in a fantastic manner, reaching across the sky like human limbs contorted with strange agony. They were the sort of trees which force themselves into dreams. Some of them were half dead, green on one side and black upon the other; while the dwarfed trunks were covered with ivy and masses of polypodies; overgrown so thickly with these parasites that the bark was nowhere visible. Such a thickness of moss coated some of the boulders that the hardness of the granite was not perceptible. Beneath the river tumbled; a rough and wild Tavy; the river of rocks, the open, sun-parched region of the high moor; the water clear and cold from Cranmere; and there was a long way to go yet before it reached cover, the hanging trees, and the mossy bogs pink with red-rattles, and the woods white with wind-flowers, and the stretch of bluebell-land, the ferns, bracken, asphodel, and the pleasant winding pathways where fairy-tales and decent love abide, and the little folk laugh at moonlight. "It be a whist old place," Thomasine said; the words, but not the thought, frightened out of her by Pendoggat's rude embrace. Like most girls of her class she was no talker, because she did not know how to put words together. She could laugh without ceasing when the occasion justified it, laughter being with her what tail-wagging is to a dog, the natural expression of pleasure or good-will; but there was not much to laugh at just then. "You haven't told any one about our meetings? They don't know at Town Rising?" said Pendoggat. "No, sir," answered Thomasine. "It wouldn't do for them to know. They'd talk themselves sick. You don't wear much, my maid. Nothing under your blouse. If it wasn't for your fat you'd take cold." He had thrust his hand into the front of her dress, and clutched a handful of yielding flesh. "Don't ye, sir. It ain't proper," entreated Thomasine. She hardly dared to struggle because she was afraid. Instinct told her certain behaviour was not proper, although it had not prevented her from coming to that "whist old place." It was fear which had brought her there.