Eventually the two, both rapid walkers, had gone faster than the rest and become the leaders of the impromptu procession to the shrine of the Old Man, so that when the halt was called they were standing together and apart from the others, forty or fifty feet further down the glen and where they had perhaps a yet better view of the profile than any of the company. Both were dear lovers of nature, if the word "reverent" could not indeed be added to the appreciation of both; and standing together there, even in silence, the intuitive knowledge of the inner life of each seemed to bring them more closely together than introductions and a better knowledge of antecedents could possibly have done. Then the crowd tired of gazing and moved back towards the house, leaving the two standing together and probably supposing themselves alone. They were not alone, in fact; for under the shadow of the trees to the left, half way between the spot where the new friends were standing and that which had been occupied by the body of the visitors, were three persons continuing the same lingering gaze. These were the officer and two ladies who each found the support of an arm--Margaret Hayley and her mother, the latter of whom, it would thus seem, was also at the Profile under the escort of the military gentleman. Unobserved themselves, they had the two men in full moonlight below and could see them almost as well as in the broader light of day. "Who are they, Captain Coles? Anybody we know?" asked the elder lady, speaking so low that the sound did not creep down to the two gazers. "Both new-comers, I think," answered the military gentleman. "Yes, they both came in to-night; and one of them, Margaret, is the booby who stepped on your foot a little while ago, and whom I shall yet take occasion to kick before he leaves the mountains if he does not learn to keep out of people's way." "I beg you will not allow yourself to get into difficulty on account of that trifling accident, and for me!" answered Margaret Hayley, while something very like a shudder, not at all warranted by the words, and that the Captain was not keen enough to perceive, swept through her form and even trembled the arm that rested within his. "Difficulty? oh, no difficulty, to me, you know; and for you, Margaret, more willingly than any other person in the world, of course!" and Captain Hector Coles, confident that he had expressed himself rather felicitously, thought it a good time to bow around to Miss Hayley, and did so. "You are quite right, Captain Hector Coles," said Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Low people, who do not even know how to walk without running over others, should be kept at their proper distance; and of course gentlemen and soldiers like yourself find it not only a duty but a privilege to afford to us ladies that protection." This time Captain Hector Coles, immensely flattered, bowed round on the other side, to the elder lady.