Up the Hill and Over | Page 2

scrambled to his feet, reached for the hated books, and disappeared rapidly in the direction of the halls of learning.
Meanwhile the stranger, unconscious of the moral awakening behind him, plodded wearily up the steep and sunny hill. As he is our hero we shall not describe him. There is no hurry, and there will be other occasions upon which he will appear to better advantage. At present let us be content with knowing that there was no reason for the hat and suit he wore save a mistaken idea of artistic suitability. "If I am going to be a tramp," he had said, "I want to look like a tramp." He didn't, but his hat and coat did.
He felt like a tramp, though, if to feel like a tramp is to feel hot and sticky and hungry. Perhaps real tramps do not feel like this. Perhaps they enjoy walking. At any rate they do not carry knapsacks, but betray a touching faith in Providence in the matter of clean linen and tooth brushes.
Before the top of the hill was reached, Dr. Callandar wished devoutly that in this last respect he had behaved like the real thing. In setting out to lead the simple life the ultimate is to be recommended--and knapsacks are not the ultimate. They are heavy things with the property of growing heavier, and prove of little use save to sit upon in damp places. The doctor's feelings in regard to his were intensified by an utter lack of dampness anywhere. The top of the hill was a sun-crowned eminence, blazingly, blisteringly, suffocatingly hot. The valley, spread out beneath him, was soaked in sunshine, a haze of heat quivered visibly above the roofs of the pretty town it cradled. There was a river and there were woods, but the trees hung motionless, and the river wound like a snake of brass among them.
The doctor regarded both the knapsack and the prospect resentfully. He had hoped for a breeze upon the hill-top, and there was no breeze. Raising his hand to remove his hat, he noticed that the hand was trembling, and swore softly. The hand continued to tremble, and holding it out before him he watched it, interestedly, until a powerful will brought the quivering nerves into subjection.
"Jove!" he muttered. "Not a moment too soon--this holiday!"
Then, hat in hand, he started down the hill.
It was a long hill, very long, much longer than it had any need or right to be. It had a twist in its nature which would not allow it to run straight. It meandered; it hesitated; it never knew its own mind, but twisted and turned and thought better of it a dozen times in half a mile. It was a hill with short cuts favourably known to small boys and to tramps with a distaste for highways; but this tramp, not being a real one, knew none of them, and was compelled to do exactly as the hill did. The result was, that when at last it slipped into the cool shade of a row of beeches at its base, its victim was as exhausted as itself.
He was thirsty, too, and, worse still, he knew from a certain dizzy blindness that one of his bad headaches was coming on--and there still lay another mile between him and the town. Pressing his hand against his eyes to restore for the moment their normal clearness of vision, he saw, a short way down the road, a gate; and through the gate and behind some trees, the white gleam of a building. But better than all, he saw, between the gate and the building, a red pump! Then the blindness and pain descended again, and he stumbled on more by faith than by sight; blundering through the half-open gate, his precarious course directed wholly by the pump's exceeding redness, which shone like a beacon fire ahead.
Fortunately, it was a real pump with real water and a sucker in good standing, warranted to need no priming. At the stroke of the red handle the good, cool water gurgled and arose with a delightful "plop!" It splashed from the spout freely upon the face and hands of the victim of the long hill--delicious, life-giving! The delight it brought seemed compensation almost for heat and pain and weariness. Callandar felt that if he could only let its sweetness stream indefinitely over his closed eyes it would wash away the blindness and the ache. Perhaps--
"I am afraid I cannot allow you to use this pump!" said a crisp voice primly. "This is not," with capital letters, "a Public Pump!"
Callandar wiped the surplus water from his face and looked up. There, beside him in the yellow haze of his semi-blindness, stood the owner of the voice. She appeared to be clothed