Fraeulein was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so Fraeulein was not to wait luncheon.

Mary went to her grandmother's room to pay her duty visit.

There were no letters for her to write that morning, so she was perfectly free.
The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching order.

The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted by Highland lasses in Inverness.

They carried a couple of hunting flasks filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.
It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike.