Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/109

. You’ve been fasting too long, I see; it’s my fault: I ought to have thought of that before.’

The young girl shook her head as she took her uncle’s hand affectionately.

‘Not hungry, thanks, Uncle Spines. I'm not through it yet. When I am, I'll eat and drink, I promise you. Come along the ridge now; well get back to Whitegate by the valley road.’

And off she tramped at a pace that taxed her uncle’s powers to keep up with her, along the crest of the hill northwards, that is, with her back to Roche’s Tower and the ocean. After passing about half-a-mile of level and rather swampy pastures, separated by high rough walls with projecting stones fixed up either side to do duty for a stile at every point of crossing the footpath, they dropped over the fence into a lane which ran straight down into the valley at right angles to their previous course, that is, eastward. It not only ran into but crossed the valley, continuing straight up the wood-besprinkled slope opposite, in full view; here, however, it ceased to be a lane, for it was joined in the valley by the main road from Whitegate already mentioned, the road by which our friends had not come, but by which they were about to return. Thus—we must beg the reader's particular attention here—all the ways now visible to our heroine and her uncle formed together a, whereof the vertical shank B D ran north and south, forming the main road along the valley by which our friends were about to return to Whitegate; that is, they were about to proceed from the top of the shank, B, or the south, to the bottom D, or the north, descending C B the right or western arm of the which represented the lane just now mentioned, and having in their faces, while descending