CHAPTER I

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      "Oh! Dash it all!... I'm so sorry...!"

      "Oh! Dash it all!... I'm so sorry...!"

      The coincident exclamations and their sequent apology were separated by a crash, followed by a pause, during which the two cyclists who had collided picked themselves out of the dust unhurt and looked quickly at their machines; finally turning to each other with a smiling bienveillance born of relief--for there was no denying that the affair might have been serious, and they were both conscious of sin.

      "It was my fault; I was looking at the view," said one of the two young men candidly. He was a trifle the taller, the broader, and distinctly the better looking; but they were both excellent specimens of clean, wholesome-looking British manhood; curiously alike also, not only in feature, but in resolute adherence to the conventional type.

      "But so was I!" returned the other. His voice was the pleasanter, not perhaps so resonant, but with more modulation in it. "Besides, your machine is damaged, and mine isn't--Oh! by George! I hadn't noticed the pedal," he added, following the other's look. He bent for closer inspection, then gave a laugh which was but half rueful; in truth, he was not altogether dissatisfied with this justice of Providence.

      "About equal--so we'll cry quits," he said.

      "It means walking for us both," said the other with a shrug. "Are you going my way?"

      He nodded towards the blue depths of the valley, which, from this gap in the wavy outline of rolling hill where they stood, dipped down to the distant sea that lay half-way up the sky like a level pale-blue cloud.

      The gap was the summit level between east and west; as such, a meeting-place for much water, and many roads.

      One of the latter meandered backwards over the wide stretch of pink bell-heather and tasselled cotton grass which told of a catchment bog, where, even in fine weather, the mountain mists dissolved into dew, and the dew gathered itself into dark peaty pools like brown eyes among the tufted lashes of the bents and rushes.

      And on either side of this central track two others curved down the rolling moor, north and south, to turn sharply behind a patch of gorse and boulders to join hands, all three, for the steep descent before them, as if afraid of solitude in this new venture. Whence, indeed, had come the collision between the two cyclists, each intent on a suddenly disclosed view.

      "There is no other way--except back on our traces--back to Blackborough--Good Lord!" came the reply.

      The first speaker smiled. "So you are a Blackberry also--Well! it is an awful place--one can hardly credit up here that all the soot and dirt is only--say a hundred miles off. Here one can breathe----"

      He looked as if he could do more than that, as, finally shaking himself free of the last speck of dust, he prepared to start.

      "Left nothing behind, I hope," said the other, glancing back. "Hullo! There's a letter tumbled out of somebody's pocket in the stramash--yours or mine?"

      It lay address upwards between them, and the taller of the two with a brief "Mine,"