"Right oh! I can talk to the uncle and you can talk to the niece. It's a fair division of labor." This arrangement was willingly agreed to by Laurance, as Dan was certain it would be since he saw that his friend was fathoms deep in love. Afterwards, the two went out of doors and surveyed the landscape. Sheepeak was situated on the top of a lofty tableland, the village being a tolerably large collection of substantial stone houses, whence the moors spread north and south, east and west. From where they were, the friends could see the green squares of cultivated fields, the purple bloom of the heather, and the azure hues which distance gave to the distant mountains. Here and there the vast country, which looked enormously large from the elevation whence they surveyed it, dipped into verdant dales, snugly clothed with forests, and sprinkled with manor-houses and villages, big and little. The lands were so far-stretching and the prospect so extensive, that Dan became mightily impressed with the magnitude of the sky. It covered them like a huge inverted cup, and as there was nothing to break its league-long sweep, Dan felt quite small in the immensity which surrounded him above and below. "I feel like a pill in the Desert of Sahara," said Mr. Halliday, sighing. "What is the sensation of feeling like a pill," rejoined Laurance drily, for he was not an imaginative individual. "Only a poet can explain, Freddy, and you are very earthy." "I never knew you were a genius," snapped Laurance, with a shrug. "You have much to learn," replied Dan reprovingly; "and as it's near eleven o'clock, suppose we light out for Vincent." Freddy agreed, and skirting the village for three-quarters of a mile, they suddenly came upon a small cottage, with walls and roof of yellowish stone covered with lichen, and standing in a small garden of wind-tormented vegetation. A low stone wall divided this from the high road, and the visitors entered through a small wooden gate to pass up a cobble-stone walk to the modest door. But the cottage itself was dwarfed wholly by huge sheds of wood covered with roofs of galvanized tin, which loomed up suddenly behind it, on a vast scale more in keeping with the character of the landscape. These were the workshops of Vincent, where he built his machines and housed them from prying eyes. The fields at the back cultivated into smooth lawns were where the aeroplanes started to fly over hill and dale, to the wonderment of the inhabitants. "Though they are pretty well used to Vincent's vagaries by this time," said Freddy, ending his explanation.