"I don't know," said Juliet, going on with her story where she had left off, "which was more angry, Lord Ashiel or Sir David. After the first few minutes, in which they both said things I am sure they regretted afterwards, neither of them would speak to the other, and it was a very uncomfortable evening for every one. The next day was better. Colonel Spicer and Sir George left by the morning train, both going on to shoot in other parts of Scotland. Mrs. Clutsam went away too; she had some one coming to stay with her at her own house near by. Both the young men went stalking on different parts of the forest, and Lord Ashiel and I, with the two other girls, spent the morning on the loch trolling for salmon; but we didn't get a rise.

"In the afternoon I walked up the river with Julia Romaninov; we talked about our schooldays. She had been at school in Germany, and I in Switzerland. After a while she got tired and went home, but I went on by myself, for I had a lot of things to think of, and was glad to be alone. I came at last to a great pool among the rocks, where the river comes down in a fall from far above in a cloud of spray and foam. I stood on a stone at the water's edge and watched the trout rising in the pool. The river was low and the water very clear. Standing on the rocks above it, it seemed as if I could see every pebble at the bottom, except where they were hidden in the ripples which spread away from beneath the fall. The pool is like the bottom of a well; high rocks rear themselves round it to a great height; they are veiled in a greenness of fern and moss, and near the top many trees have found a roothold in the crevices and bend forward towards each other over the water, as divers poise themselves before leaping down. Through a narrow opening opposite the fall the river makes its way onward. As I stood there a stone must have come down from the heights above. I did not see it, and the noise of the waterfall deadened any sound of its descent, but suddenly I felt a heavy blow between the shoulders, and I must have tumbled forward into the pool below.