Part 9 (1/2)

”What's that for?” she asked impertinently. ”It's hammerless; there's nothing to catch.”

”The pull-off's probably very light, if it's been made for a lady's use.

It's sometimes possible to jar the strikers down when they set the springs to yield at a touch.”

”Then you know something about guns?” she said, as if she had not expected this.

”Not a great deal about the scatter kind, though I've stripped a few.”

”We never do that,” she informed him. ”We send them to London. Still, you're right; the gun did go off when I knocked it jumping down from a wall.”

”If you'll let me have it to-night, I'll alter that. I understand we're going out again to-morrow.”

She considered a moment.

”Well,” she consented, with the air of one conferring a favor, ”you may take it when we've finished.”

Lisle wondered what had prompted him to make the offer. The way she had addressed him was not ingratiating, but he delighted in examining any fine mechanism and he had never handled such a beautifully made weapon.

They plodded on side by side through the heather, which was long and matted, and presently, seeing that she was breathless, he stopped on the crest of a higher rise and once more looked about with keen appreciation.

In front of him the crimson and purple heath was rent and fissured, and in the deep gaps washed out by heavy rains the peat gleamed a warm chocolate-brown. Elsewhere, patches of moss shone with an emerald brightness, and there were outcrops of rock tinted l.u.s.trous gray and silver with lichens. Below, near the foot of the moor, ran a straight dark line of firs, the one coldly-somber streak in the scene; but beyond it the rolling, sunlit plain ran back, fading through ever varying and softening colors to the hazy blue heights of Scotland.

Lisle's companion noticed his intent expression.

”It is rather fine up here,” she conceded. ”I sometimes feel it's almost a pity one couldn't live among the heather. Certain things would be easier on these high levels.”

”Yes?” interrogated Lisle, slightly puzzled and astonished.

”You're obviously from the woods,” she smiled. ”If you had spent a few years among my friends, you would understand. I was referring to the cultivation of ideas and manners which seem to be considered out of date now.”

Lisle made no reply to this, but he glanced too directly at a red stain on her hand.

”Blood,” she explained. ”I had a bet with Alan that I'd get a brace more than Flo; that's why I went after a cripple running in the ling. It wasn't dead when I picked it up--rather horrid, wasn't it?”

The man was conscious of some disgust. She looked very young and, slight as she was, her figure was prettily rounded and she had a soft, kittenish gracefulness; but she spoke with the a.s.surance of a dowager. Though he had killed and cut up many a deer, he shrank from the small red stain on her delicate hand. She saw it and laughed, and then with a sudden change of mood she stooped and swiftly rubbed her fingers in the heather.

”Now,” she said sharply, ”if you're sufficiently rested, we'll go on.”

Lisle moved away, but he asked a question:

”Do many girls shoot in this country?”

”No,” she answered with a mocking smile; ”not so many, after all. That's comforting, isn't it? This kind of thing is hard work, and damaging to the complexion.”

Presently they came to a wall, and Lisle stopped in some uncertainty. It was as high as his shoulders and built of loose, rough stones.

”Get over,” she ordered him. ”Then pull a lot of it down.”

He did so, making, though he endeavored to avoid this, a rather wide hole.