‘Oh, nothing, perhaps,’ was the sweet reply. ‘But are you sure you did not look a little ridiculous too? And if Effie once had her confidence in your infallibility shaken——’ ‘That is true. Like the villains in novels, you have a power over me, through the innocent ones whom I love. I will keep silence this time, but take care how you provoke me too far.’ ‘Do not be so childish.’ This was very frivolous nonsense, and they enjoyed it, as they enjoyed the hot summer sun, the cool streams, the shady woods, and even the fun they had in combating the swarms of wasps which usually followed them in these expeditions, and entirely frustrated their efforts to sit down, and, as Effie plaintively said, ‘eat a meal in peace.’ Once, deeper feelings were touched, and this was on a day when they had penetrated farther than ever before; and on this occasion, too, Michael was with them. Setting off very early, they drove in the morning coolness to Middleton-in-Teesdale, and thence onwards to High Force, where they rested and lunched; after which they drove onwards to some little huts at the edge of the moor, where path ended, and wilderness began; when they got out, and walked for a mile and a half to the wild spot where Tees comes first winding, sluggish and sinuous, over the moor top, in what is called the Weel, and then suddenly precipitates himself madly over ‘Caldron Snout,’ tearing down an incline of two hundred feet to the lower level, where he pursues a brawling way towards High Force, his next descent. This is a very wild and desolate spot, and requires intrepid walking to get to it; plunging through the thymy moor, rough, pathless, and uneven, without guide, save for rough wooden posts like crosses, planted at intervals of several hundred yards, to show the directest way to the cataract. But so few persons visit Caldron Snout, so few tourists or picnickers care to be at the trouble of penetrating to it, that no road has got beaten out. Nature seems to sit enthroned in undesecrated queenliness in the fastnesses around the cataract. It was a day that Michael and Eleanor never forgot. The children, literally frantic with the novelty and the wildness of the thing, and with the exhilarating moorland air, tore about in all directions—over heather and thyme, bluebells and boulders. Now came a scream of joy, and a mad rush to Michael or the doctor to ask the name of some hitherto unknown plant or flower—as the delicate autumn gentian, or, on some grassy banks, the poetical looking fragile ‘grass of Parnassus.’ Anon, wonder, quite awed and hushed, and treading on tiptoe to peep into a nest concealed beneath the grass, and containing five dirty-white eggs, with wine-coloured splashes on them. Then on again, to fresh fields and pastures new, till one wild whoop announced the discovery, in its steep hidden gorge, of the waterfall itself.