"I wish we could make the donkey trot!" said Sylvia, who had dismounted to spare poor Teddie's legs for the hardest part of the hill, but had taken her seat again on reaching a level piece of road. "We'll try what we can do," said Artie, producing his penknife and cutting a stick carefully from a hazel tree. "I'll give him a switch, but I advise you to hold on tight, in case he kicks." It was not a very hard blow, but Teddie seemed to resent it extremely. He was a donkey with a character, and instead of galloping on, as Sylvia had hoped, he ran straight into the hedge, where he entangled both her hat and hair so successfully in a wild-rose bush, that she had to scream to be released. "Perhaps you hit him on the wrong side," she suggested, when the donkey's nose had been pulled out into the lane again. "Then we'll try the other," said Artie, who, having dropped his stick, administered a sounding smack on the thick, shaggy coat. Teddie, however, evidently did not intend to be coerced; he made at once for the opposite hedge, and Sylvia found herself in equal difficulties with a long spray of bramble. "He's the most obstinate little beast I've ever known," said Linda. "We'll try him just once more. Oswald, you hold his head exactly in the middle of the road, then Artie and I'll each give him a thump at the same second, one on each side. Are you ready, Artie! One, two, three, off!" [Illustration: "HE ENTANGLED BOTH HER HAT AND HAIR IN A WILD-ROSE BUSH"] This time it was really off and away. The donkey took to his heels, and cantered along the road in fine style, with the boys and Linda racing after him, encouraging Sylvia, who was laughing and trying to hold on her hat and to keep the lunch from falling, while Scamp and Bute barked themselves hoarse. The enamelled mugs bumped against poor Teddie's sides, and alarmed him so much that perhaps he thought somebody was switching him in front, and intended him to run backwards, for he stopped quite suddenly, and lowered his head, with the result that Sylvia shot over his neck, and found herself sitting in the dusty road. "It serves me right!" she laughed. "No, I'm not hurt in the least. It's too bad to make him trot when he's carrying both me and the lunch. I'll walk now, and give him a rest, and then it will be Linda's turn to ride him." The road, after winding uphill for several miles between woods and high banks, led at last on to the moors, where there was a kind of tableland flanked on two sides by chains of mountains. "We're not such a very long way from the Druids' circle," said Linda. "It's only over that peak, I believe." "It's farther than you'd imagine," said Oswald. "Hilda and I went to it once, and we thought we should never get there. It's a much easier way from Aberglyn. Things look so very plain in this clear air that you often think you're quite close when really you're several miles off, and you walk and walk, and never seem to get any nearer."