He opened his eyes and smiled into hers, gurgling his appreciation of the light that shone there and the comfort of her arms; and not a shadow lingered on her face. All the optimism of mother-love, all the brave predictions that a woman associates with her first-born boy helped to drive the black mood back. The child was her one comfort: the bow God’s mercy had set in the cloud to show that her sinful folly had not doomed her to utter despair. He was hers to mould and train as she would, for her husband cared nothing for him,—she could almost thank God that it was so—and they two would be companions in the days that lay ahead, roaming the wild moors together and climbing to the very summits of the mountains. She laughed aloud as in fancy she heard his laugh—the laugh of the agile lad who makes fun of his mother’s tardiness; she lived in a paradise of the future: a paradise ready-made on those bleak, grey uplands, which were no longer frosty and heartless and old, but young and bright as the spring-time.... She had gone far enough along the Tarn road—too far, indeed, for her strength—and she turned back. The baby river, a good distance below, seemed to her unusually loud and boisterous. The noise of its roaring echoed strangely from the sides of old Cawden on whose lower slopes the path she was treading ran. She would have noticed it more if her forehead had not been buried so often against the soft flesh of her baby’s neck. It was not until she reached the point where the Tarn road joins that from Gordel that she became aware that the sound of rushing water came not from the river below but from the hill above. I have said already that the neighbourhood of Mawm is famous for its natural curiosities; but of all the phenomena connected with it there is none more remarkable than that which is associated with the hamlet’s guardian hill. At irregular intervals (for the action is uncertain and governed by undiscovered causes) there pours from the foot of Cawden and from a usually dry outlet a flood of water which has cut a deep channel at the foot of the somewhat steep bank that flanks one side of the Gordel road at this point. The bank shelves down to the Tarn road, and there the torrent discharges itself upon the roadway, raging along its improvised bed on its mad rush to the river with such force that the road is not infrequently washed bare to the rock. For several hours the flood may continue, and subside as quickly as it arose; and years may elapse before there is any return of the eruption.