"I am not sure that it is my own country," was her reply. "You see----" And then she stopped. "It will be nothing to you," she added after a minute, and for some time they walked along together in silence. "It must be just lovely to live amid such surroundings as these; still, I should find it lonely sometimes," he ventured at length. "You would, if--if--" And then the girl looked at him curiously. "But I expect you'll not be understanding what I mean," she added. Again they walked on in silence, Douglas longing to ask her what she meant, and yet shrinking from taking what he felt might be a liberty, for there was something about the girl that kept him from speaking freely. Dressed like a peasant as she was, he instinctively felt that here was no ordinary farmer's drudge. She had uttered nothing beyond commonplaces, but the look in her eyes, the tremor of her lips suggested romance and mystery and poetry. "You see," she said a minute later, as if talking to herself, "I have no mother. I never saw her; at least, I cannot remember ever seeing her, and she was not Scotch." "No?" said Douglas. "Then we have something in common: my people on my father's side were Scotch, but all my mother's people belong to the South." "And mine, too," said the girl. "But what can it be to you?" And again she seemed to be thinking of something far away. "Do you know," said the young man, "you are the first person I have spoken to since morning? I have been on the tramp all the day. I had my lunch by the side of a stream, and I have kept away from every house. I wanted to be alone. I expect that is why I want you to tell me why you don't seem happy." Again the girl looked at him curiously. "I think I should go mad sometimes," she said, "if I did not think my dead mother was near me. I do not mean when I am out here alone on the moors, but it's home that makes it so hard." "Tell me," said the young fellow. It did not seem to him as though he were talking to a stranger at all. The girl did not belong to his class, and evidently her associations and education removed her far from him, yet he had an instinctive sympathy with her. After all, I suppose every young fellow is attracted by a young pretty face, wild, longing eyes, and beautiful features suggestive of romance and poetry and unsatisfied yearnings. "You see," said the girl, "my father was a fisherman. Years ago, when he was a young man, he sailed down the West of England, and his boat harboured at a little Cornish village called St. Ives. There he met my mother, and I have heard him say that she had Spanish blood in her veins. Anyhow, they fell in love with each other and got married.