They walked quickly, Claude urged on by her companion, who climbed the steep path with the agility of a goat, till they reached a fall, where the water came tumbling over the hoary, weather-stained rocks, and the path forked, one track going over the stream behind the fall, and the other becoming a rough stairway right up the side of the glen. "Hadn't we better go this way?" said Claude timidly, indicating the route to the left. "No; too far round," said Mary peremptorily. "Come along," and she began to skip from rock to rock and rough step to step, up the side of the glen, Claude following her with more effort till they reached the rugged top of the cliff, and continued their walk onward among heather bloom and patches of beautifully fine grass, with here and there broken banks, where the wild thyme made the air fragrant with its scent. "This is ten times as nice as going through the woods," cried Mary. "You seem to get such delicious puffs of the sea breeze. _Vorwarts_!" She hurried her companion on for about a mile, when the track turned sharply off to the right, and a steep descent led them to the banks of another stream which was gradually converging towards the one they had left, so that the two nearly joined where they swept down their rocky channels into the sea. "This is ten times as good a way, Claudie. I always think it is the prettiest walk we have. Look what a colour the fir trees are turning, with those pale green tassels at the tips; and how beautiful those patches of gorse are. I wish one could get such a colour in paintings." She chatted on merrily as they descended the stream, with its many turns and zigzags, through the deep chasm along which it ran; and whenever Claude appeared disposed to speak, Mary always had some familiar object to which she could draw her companion's attention. In fact, it seemed as if she would not give her time to think, as she noted that a quick, nervous look was directed at the stream from time to time. A stranger might have thought Claude was nervous about the risks of the path as it went round some pool, with the rocks coming down perpendicularly to the deep, dark water. Or that she was in dread of encountering graver difficulties in the lonely ravine, whose almost perpendicular sides were clothed with growth of a hundred tints. Far beneath them, flashing, foaming, and hurrying on with a deep, murmuring sound, ran the little river, from rapid to fall, and from fall to deep, dark, sluggish-looking hole; while in places the trees, which had contrived to get a footing in some crevice of the rock, overhung the river, and threw the water beneath into the deepest shade. They reached, at length, a more open part, where the sun shone down brightly, and their way lay through a patch of moss-grown hazel stubbs, which after a few steps made a complete screen from the sun's rays, and they walked over a verdant carpet which silenced every footfall.