"Only in part," said the Student. "I take it that they are all sorts, like ourselves. They are, as you know, the vanished debris of all the peoples that have helped to make this planet what it is. Good people, many of them. But they cannot altogether love those who have driven them under the ground." "And who is the old hawker, daddy," she asked, "and what has he to do with it all?" "I can't talk about anything except what you already know," said the Student. "Have you found out yet how to start?" "I am to go up a hill," said Fiona. "And I am going up Heleval now. And I came to see if you would come with me." "I wish I could; I wish very much I could," said the Student. "I do not know what you may find; but I know well that if I went with you, you would find nothing but grass and rock. I am too old to see the things you can see, you know. You have to do it alone, little daughter." So Fiona filled her pocket with bread and cheese, and started; and the Student, after a useless attempt to settle down to his inscriptions, set up a little three-inch telescope with which he sometimes entertained Fiona on fine nights, gazing at Jupiter's moons or Saturn's rings, and followed her across the moor as far as he could. It was the only way he could go with her. * * * * * There are many worse things in the world than setting out to climb Heleval on a beautiful morning on the first of October, when the grass in unsunned corners is still pearly with the frost of the night, and the whole earth is touched with the wonderful caress of the cool autumn sunshine. Fiona's way lay along the shore road, past the bank of heather and fern which in August had been gay with flowers, napperd and potentilla, blue milkwort and starry eye-bright, and alive with butterflies, blues and small heaths and pearl-bordered fritillaries; but the flowers were faded now, and in their place, in the little burn where the hazelnuts grew, was a tapestry of purple burrs and scarlet hips. The shore road ended at a little burn; here an old stone bridge, grown over with grass, crossed the pool which in times of spate would hold a fat, white sea-trout, and here Fiona and the Urchin had used to come in summer to gather globe flowers. From this point a sheep track led up the valley beside the burn, through great spaces of yellowing bracken, by little swampy springs where late forget-me-nots still lingered and an early snipe might rise with a skeep, and across low-lying wastes of bog-myrtle, perfuming all the air with its dying leaves; then the ground began to rise, and fern and bog-myrtle gave place to short, hard grass tufted with bulrushes, and beds of matted unburnt heather, seamed with rabbit tracks.