"Come, I say, my dear, what's the good of being so stand-offish. It's very nice and pretty, and makes a man fonder of you, and that's why you do it, I know! I say! I didn't know that the pretty Derbyshire lasses in this out-of-the-way place were as coy and full of their little games as our London girls." Out-of-the-way place indeed! Dinah Gurdon knew that well enough, as, with her teeth set fast and her eyes dilated, she hurried along that afternoon over the mountain-side. The path was an old track, which had been made hundreds of years before, so that ponies could drag the little trucks up and down, and in and out, but always lower and lower to the smelting-house down in the dale, a mere crack in the limestone far below, whose perpendicular jagged walls were draped with ivy, and at whose foot rushed along the clear crystal trout-river, which brought a stranger into those solitudes once in a way. But not on this particular afternoon, for Dinah looked vainly for some tweed-clothed gentleman with lithe rod over his shoulder and fishing-creel slung on back, to whom she could appeal for protection from the man who followed her so closely behind on the narrow, shelf-like path. Two miles at least to go yet to the solitary nook in the hills just above the bend in the stream, where the pretty, romantic, flower-clothed cottage stood; and where only, as far as she knew, help could be found. And at last, feeling that she must depend entirely upon herself for protection, she drew her breath hard, and mastered the strong desire within her to cry aloud and run along the stony track as fast as her strength would allow. But she only walked fast, with her sunburned, ungloved fingers tightly holding her basket, her face hidden by her close sun-bonnet, and her simply made blue spotted cotton dress giving forth a peculiar ruffing sound as she hurried on with "that man" close behind. She had seen that man again and again for the past two months, and he had spoken to her twice, and each time she had imagined that he was some stranger who was passing through, and whom one might never see again. She knew better now. He was not a bad-looking fellow of five-and-thirty; and an artist, who could have robed him as he pleased, instead of having him in ordinary clothes, could not have wished for a better model for a picturesque ruffian than Michael Sturgess, a man born in London, but who had passed the greater part of his time in Cornwall and in Wales. A good workman, but one who had a kind of notoriety among his fellows for divers little acts of gallantry, real and imaginary. He was not a man of strong perceptions or experiences out of mines, and he judged womankind, as he called them, by their faces and their clothes. Silk and fashionable bonnets suggested ladies to him; cotton dresses and pretty faces, girls who enjoyed a bit of flirtation, and who were his lawful prey.