The pines stood about still and solemn. The light breeze from the sea made no difference to them, but the birches quivered, blotting the white of the path with myriads of purple splashes, none of which were distinct or ever for a second stood still, criss-crossing and melting one into the other, all equally a-dither with excitement. Louis checked for a moment to breathe and listen. He said to himself that Patsy, for whose sake he had torn through the underbrush at the imminent danger of life and limb, was still far away down the glen. "I shall go a bit farther till I find a snug corner and then--wait for Patsy!" What Louis Raincy meant was that he would find a place equally sheltered from the eyes of his grandfather and from possible spies in the front windows of Cairn Ferris, the quiet ivy-grown house at the head of the glen, against which his grandfather had hurled so many anathemas in vain. At last he found his place--a chosen nook. The sound of voices would be drowned by the splash of the little waterfall. The pool into which it fell was deep enough to keep any one from breaking in upon them too suddenly, and through a rift in the leaves a piece of bluest sky peered down. White of waterfall, sleepy brown of pool, dusky under an eyelash of bracken, and blue of sky--Patsy, who noticed all things, would like that. But Patsy did not come. Could she have passed and he not seen? Clearly not, for Louis had come downhill as fast as a big boulder set a-rolling. What, then, could she be doing? Ah, who could ever tell what Patsy might be doing or call her to account afterwards for the deed? Louis only knew that he dared not even try. All the same he left his nook with some disrelish--it would have been so capital a conjuncture to have met her just there, and he had taken such pains! However, there was no choice. He must go to seek Patsy if Patsy would not come to him. She was returning from her daily lesson at her uncle Julian's. He knew that she would most likely have a book under her arm, and an ashplant in her hand. She would come along quietly, whistling low to herself, tickling the tails of the trout in the shallows with her stick and laughing aloud as they scudded away into the Vandyke-brown shadows of the bank. The glen opened out a little and Louis paused at the corner, standing still in shadow. Twenty yards away Patsy was talking to a young man in a shabby grey suit, a broad blue bonnet set on his head, and they were conferring profoundly over a book which Patsy held in her hands. The young man in the shabby suit appeared to be instructing Patsy, or at least explaining a difficult passage, which he did with more zeal and gusto than Louis cared about. He knew him in a moment, for of course the heir of Raincy knew everybody within thirty miles.