'No,' she said after a pause for reflection. 'No, I dare say they do not, but don't you think if you walked to Stoke Babbage you might be able to get one for me?' 'I might be able to get a pony chaise and a quiet pony,' I answered, scenting the possibility of a five-mile walk that would give me an hour or two of peace. 'Well, will you go and try if you can get one?' she asked. 'If you don't mind being left alone for a few hours, I'll do what I can,' I said. She was beginning to object, when Virginia appeared, leading in her mother. 'Here's my mother come to keep you company, Mrs. MacGill,' she explained. 'She wishes to hear all about your chill, from the first shiver right on to the last cough.' She placed Mrs. Pomeroy in an armchair, and fairly drove me out of the room before her, pushing me with both hands. 'Come! Run! Fly! Escape!' she cried. 'You are as white as butter with waiting on that woman's fads. I won't let you come in again under three hours. My mother's symptoms are good to last for two and a half hours, and then Mrs. MacGill can fill up the rest of the time with hers.' Gaiety like Virginia's is infectious. I ran, yes, really ran downstairs along with her, quite forgetting my headache and weariness. I almost turned traitor to Mrs. MacGill, and was ready to laugh at her with this girl. 'She wants a pony chaise, and I'm to go down to Stoke Babbage to choose it,' I said. 'Why, that's five miles away, isn't it?' she asked. 'You're not half equal to a walk like that.' 'Anything--anything for a respite from Mrs. MacGill!' I cried. 'Well, if you are fit for it, I reckon I am,' Virginia said, and with that we set off together down the road.... III VIRGINIA POMEROY GREY TOR INN 'The inn at the world's end. The inn at the world's end.' These words come into my mind every morning when I look out of my window at the barren moor with its clumps of blazing whin, the misty distance, and the outline of Grey Tor against the sky. That 'giant among rocks rising in sombre and sinister majesty athwart the blue' looks to my eye like an interesting stone on a nice, middle-sized hill. If only they would dwell more upon the strange sense of desolation and mystery it seems to put into the landscape, instead of being awed by its so-called size! I am fascinated by it, but refuse to be astounded. This naughty conception of the colossus of the moor is the one link between Sir Archibald and me, for he has seen Ben Nevis and I the Yosemite crags. Geologically speaking, I admit that these moor rocks must be fascinating to the student, and certainly we at home are painfully destitute of 'clapper-bridges,' 'hut-circles,' and 'monoliths'; although I heard an imaginative fellow-countryman declare yesterday to a party of English trippers that we had so many we became tired to death of the sight of them, and the government ordered hundreds of them to be pulled down.