We once wandered, dearly beloved reader, you and I together, over some steep bare hills which lie between Winslow Park and Northferry, watching Chandos in his gardener's guise, as he travelled towards the house of Mr. Tracy. Those hills, not at all unlike the Mendips in some of their features, were somewhat different in others. The high road took the most sterile and desolate part of them, where the curlew loved to dwell in solitude, and the wild plover laid her spotted eggs. But here and there, in their long range--which might extend some five-and-thirty miles from the spot where they began to tower above the plain in one county to that where they bend the head again in another--were some dells and valleys, in which the woods nestled and the streams glided on. The river which Chandos had swam at Winslow, and which, passing on, increasing in size, gave to the village or small town near Mr. Tracy's property the name it bore, by reason of what is called a horse-ferry established there from time immemorial, had at some period of the world's history undertaken the troublesome task of forcing a way for itself through the opposing barrier of hill, and had somehow succeeded. It is wonderful what feats rivers and people will perform when they are driven into a corner, and have no way out of it but by a great effort. Then, when they have accomplished their task, how they rejoice in the triumphant exertions of their vigour, and play in scorn with the obstacles they have surmounted. In a deep valley amongst those hills, seldom if ever trodden by human foot--for there was wanting footing for man or beast in many parts of the gorge--is one scene of exceeding beauty, well worthy of being more frequently visited than it has been. I know not whether in the spring, when the young leaves coming out decorate the sides of the dell with every hue of yellow and green, or in the autumn, when the mellow brown and red of the decaying year spreads a melancholy splendour over the woods, the picture is more beautiful; but to see it in its best aspect must always be when the tears, either of the year's wayward youth or of its sorrowful age, have been pouring down for some days before. The reason is this,--that over a high shelf of rock, the river, having overcome all the obstructions of the previous way, bounds down towards the goal to which its eager course tends in the distant plains, then first in sight, and the boughs of a thousand kinds of trees and shrubs wave round the rejoicing waterfall as if in triumph. It is not indeed with one boisterous leap that the river springs from the height, some fifty feet above, to the tumbling pool beneath; but as if at two great steps it strides upon its way, setting one white foot in foam upon a rocky point about half-way down, and then again another in the depth of the valley. A projecting point of crag, upon which a sapling ash-tree has rooted itself, stands out between the two falls; and