To return to the old road: it forded two brooks, the Red Brook which runs into the sea behind Norman’s Woe Rock, and the White Brook which runs out (amid much ivy) over the rocky beach by the Dry Chasm. The Red Brook must have been much bigger formerly, for it turned a saw-mill before 1700, and the ruined dam is still to be seen a little way below the ford, where it serves as a bridge. This brook is charged with coloring-matter from the swamps, so that it lines your tin cup with gold (if you chance to have “escaped from the Bastille of civilization”), and it furnishes the most unsatisfying draught ever swallowed. Not a drop ever seems to go lower than your collar-button. It makes one thirsty to think of it. But it was lovely to look at! It ran out of a great bed of cardinal, jewel-weed and raspberry-bushes (which bore monstrous berries because they stood with their feet in the water) and spread out in a big red pool at the foot of a gentle dip in the grassy road; and from the upper level you looked over the brook at a preternaturally steep little pitch beyond, where the road climbed a pine-clad hill, bowing out to the very verge of the dark descent to a ferny swamp, cradle of the brook. The dark background was faced with bright growth, and all in the light of sweet summer mornings with water sparkling in the bay and in the brook! Above, the road turned sharply, broadening into a level glade set round with barberry-bushes, door-yard of a vanished dwelling, and then turned another corner round the cellar and away. This was a cherished haunt. A little sidelong, slippery path, parallel with the brook led down a rugged slope of pine and cedar to a little bluff behind Norman’s Woe Rock. Here we camped out before that way of life became general, except for Uncle Sam. He had just been camping out on a large scale, and so it chanced that two large round tents and sundry new rubber blankets came our way and did not go a-begging. The Red Brook filled our kettles in a shady little glen with sides so steep we had to lower and raise ourselves by the trees, and then it ran away and spread out over the sea-rocks in a series of big, shallow basins—a famous dressing-room—but the way to it was of the roughest, for the red rock scaled off, and literally cut the soles from our boots.