It flowed between steep banks; and the colour of the water was that of a burnished red-brown chestnut. Hundreds of stones, large enough to act as small breakwaters, lay scattered on the river-bed; and around each separate stone curled a perpetual wave, foam-white, with a gleam of golden light shining as from a fairy-lamp at its centre. This was repeated times without number. Behind them and in front were rounded fells, like a series of land-waves struck into immobility, forming the sides of the valley; and every fell differed from its neighbour. Here was one shaded in purple and brown; there another bright grassy-green; yet another dark from base to summit with masses of bracken; a fourth clad in patches of dull red, purple rather than crimson, from early heather-bloom; and a round-topped hill which had donned a veil of blue gauze. To the left, higher up, might be seen a solitary farmhouse; a rough pathway, deluged with stones, winding thither. "They would give us milk at the farm," remarked Phyllys. But, with a smile, he produced sandwiches and a cup. "I don't know any place like this," murmured Phyllys, after their simple luncheon. She was in a state of measureless content. Giles said little, and she hardly looked at him; yet she knew that he felt with her. That was the one thing she had lacked and longed for; and it made all the difference. "Nor I." He had been thinking how like her hair was to the burnished chestnut of the water. "One hardly expects such a spot in England. Few of us know our own country." Phyllys lay back, resting her head on folded arms, and looking at the sky. It gave Giles a fuller view than he had yet gained of her eyes. He forgot fell and river in the contemplation. "I wonder," she murmured, "whether other worlds are half as lovely as this. I wonder whether they have stuffy meetings in Jupiter and Mars—and horrid good people making speeches about the badness of other good people?" "Jupiter is probably too warm." She went into a chime of laughter. "I forgot! I ought to have known." She sat up suddenly. "Tell me about your home." "You would find it flat." He refrained still from letting her know how soon she would see for herself. "No fells. No mountain-torrents." "And the house?" "Respectably old. There was a castle—once. Only a wall of it remains." "And Mrs. Keith and 'Colin' live there with you. He is not really your cousin, I suppose?" Giles explained the connection. Thomas Randolph, his grandfather, had one son and one daughter, James and Annie. The son, James, married; and his wife died soon after the birth of their only child—"myself," interjected Giles—the widower dying a little later, thus leaving an infant possessor of the Castle Hill property. The daughter, Annie, married Geoffry Keith, and she too died early; after which her husband married again, his second wife being a Miss Cecil Reeves. They had one little boy, named Colin.