Behind him was the house-front and the strip of low-walled garden, where lad's love, and pinks, and tobacco-plant grew as they chose among the straggling rose-bushes; before him were the fields he had crossed, the trees bordering the stream, and, topping the mist, the broad breast of the Blue Hill. On his left hand the rough road before the house dwindled to a track that led upwards to the pass between the sloping shoulder of the Blue Hill and the jagged, precipitous rocks of the Spiked Crags, and between these and the hill behind the house a deeply cut watercourse was grooved, hardly more than an empty trough at this moment, but in the time of rain lashed by a flood of waters that looked from the house like a white and solid streak. Alexander called this water the mountain-witch's hair, for it streamed to his fancy like the locks of an old hag, and when the sound of its roaring came to him through the winter night he thought she was shrieking in anger, and he pulled the bed-clothes about his ears. But he told no one of that secret name, and, like other people, he spoke of it as the Steep Water, because of the cascades in which it fell. Broad Beck was the name of the stream in which he bathed, and, but for the one deep pool, it went over stony shallows to the lake of which Alexander, sitting on the horse-block, could see a glimmer at his right hand, like a grey pathway between the inn roof and the trees in the little churchyard. It was a great sheet of water edged on the hither shore by the high-road and the rough moorland beyond, on the other by a black mountain-side. It sent its waters to the sea, and in return the sea sent up the mists that curled, and rolled, and broke away again among the hills, or sent down the fierce steel fingers of the rain. Alexander's eyes were on the Blue Hill, but his thoughts were with his breakfast, and through the stone passage leading from the kitchen to the porch there came encouraging sounds and savours. "Oh, mother!" he cried hungrily; "will you never have it ready?" He did not heed her shouted answer, for he had heard steps on the stony track, and seen the shambling figure of a man coming towards him. Drunk, was he? Alexander knew the signs, but men seldom stagger at breakfast-time, and the nearest house of call in the direction whence the stranger came was six or seven long miles away across the hills. No; on a nearer view he was certainly not drunk. But what, then, was the matter with the man? "Boy"--he stood before the horse-block, and plucked at the tufts of moss clinging to his clothes--"is this a farm?" "No," said Alexander, wondering at the little man with the sparse, disordered hair. "There's moss on your head, too," he said. The stranger put up his hand an inch or two, and dropped it. "Everywhere," he murmured. "Was it your dog I heard barking?" "May be. He's a loud barker." "Do you think I could have a cup of milk? I'm very cold. I lost my way up there, among the hills."