"I hope he will be all right. I shouldn't like him to harm himself." Gemma herself was puffing somewhat as they continued up the grassy path cut through the low mounds of vegetation around them.

"He's a steppe pony. Independent. Cossacks expect them to do for themselves."

Gemma eyed her personal war pony with a new feeling of satisfaction. "Edmund never explained that. I have no idea where he obtained him. I thought perhaps he took pity on his abnormality."

"He is a soldier," Mr. Worthington said with finality.

Gemma nodded agreeably and looked ahead on the path. "See? We're coming up on the first two cairns."

Two oddly shaped stacks of stone reaching several feet high lay on either side of the path at the crest of the hill they now climbed. Gemma turned her head to see Mr. Worthington looking supremely unimpressed. She supposed that to an outsider the cairns looked rather like a fallen jumble of children's stacking blocks. But to the people of the dales the cairns were an ancient treasure.

"When we walk a little higher you'll see the rest of them."

As she had predicted, a few more steps brought the next hilltop into view and the seven remaining cairns marched like soldiers along the crest.

Now Mr. Worthington was looking at the cairns with more curiosity. "How old?"

Gemma laughed and shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest idea. I've heard some people claim they are thousands of years old. I've heard others say that they date from before the days of Robin Hood. Did you know he was rumored to originate from Yorkshire?"

Mr. Worthington was not to be deterred. "What for?"

Gemma inhaled deeply of the sweet spring air. "I don't believe anyone really knows. The story I've heard most often is that these stones mark the exact boundary between Swaledale and Westmorland. Apparently, it boils down to a matter of cheese."

"Cheese."

She nodded happily, enjoying the small absurdity of it. "A defined boundary would be necessary, you see, so that cheese made on the east side of the cairns cannot be labeled with the same origin of the west side of the cairns. There is a long and fervent history of competition."

"Which cheese is better?"

"Why, Swaledale, of course!" Her loyalty was staunch, although she was laughing by then. "To be sure, cheese is a very important local industry."

"They stacked rocks?"

Gemma smirked at him. "Just wait until we get closer. It's a bit more significant than simply stacked rocks."