Kate could look at the shining pebbles, at the waving water-weed, at the darting fish. When she had left Mr. Fielding, she went to one of her favourite haunts beside the Dart, where it brawled over a cataract of rocks and then spread into a pool still as glass. Now she saw what puzzled her, and set her active brain questioning the reason. As she looked into the water, she could see no reflection of her own face; the light sky was mirrored, and where the shadow of her head came, she could see far more distinctly to the bottom of the pool than elsewhere. Indeed, when a fish darted past she could discern its fins and scales, but when it passed beyond her shadow, its form became indistinct. Then Kate rose on her elbows, and as she did this the sun caught her cheek and nose, and cheek and nose were at once reflected in the water, and where the reflection came, there the water was less transparent to her eyes. To observe was to rouse in the girl’s mind a desire to find an explanation for the very simple phenomenon that puzzled her. She was thus engaged, raising her face, then a hand, so as to be now sunlit, then to intercept the light, and see what the effect was on the water, when she was startled to observe in the liquid mirror the reflection of a second face looking down from above. The sun was on it, in the eyes, and they glittered up at her from below. With an exclamation of alarm, she turned and saw a man standing above her. CHAPTER XXI AN OFFER Kate rose to a sitting posture, and drew her feet under her, rested one hand on the rock, and with the other screened her eyes from the glare of the sun, to observe the intruder on her solitude. Then she recognised Roger Redmore. He was without his coat, an axe over one shoulder. In his right hand he held a tuft of cotton grass dug up by the roots. “I knowed as you wor here,” said he, “but I dursn’t speak before others, lest they should find me out who I wor.” “Are you living here, Roger?” “I be working here at the felling Brimpts oaks. You see, your fayther, he’s so little at Coombe that he don’t know me, and I thought I might get money by working here. And I want you to do a little job for me.” “What is it, Roger?” “There’s two jobs. First, do y’ see this here root o’ white shiny grass? Well, I want y’ to take it to Coombe and to set it on my little maid’s grave. Stick the roots in. It may grow and it mayn’t. Hereabouts it groweth mostly in wet land. But anyhows by it I shall know where the little maid lies when I come back to Coombe.” “You are returning, Roger?”