But I believe we were on the road to that carding-mill. We had almost forgotten it; and now, as we look ahead, we see the old lumber-shed that marks the upper ledge of Devil’s Hollow. From this old shed a trout-brook plunges through a series of rocky terraces, now winding among prostrate moss-grown trunks, now gurgling through the bare roots of great white birches, or spreading in a swift, glassy sheet as it pours across some broad shelving rock, and plunges from its edge in a filmy water-fall. It roars pent up in narrow cañons, and out again it swirls in a smooth basin worn in the solid rock. At almost every rod or two along its precipitous course there is a mill somewhere hid among the trees--queer, quaint little mills, some built up on high stone walls, others fed with trickling flumes which span from rock to rock, supporting on every beam a rounded cushion of velvety green moss, and hanging a fringe of ferns from almost every crevice. And one there is in ruins, fallen from its lofty perch, and piled in chaos in the stream. There are saw-mills, and shook-mills, and carding-mills, seven altogether in this one descent of about three hundred feet. The water enters the ravine as pure as crystal; but in its wild booming through race-ways, dams, and water-wheels, it gradually assumes a rich sienna hue from the _débris_ of sawdust everywhere along its course. The interior of the ravine is musical with the trebles of the falling water and the accompaniment of the rumbling mills. Tiny rainbows gleam beneath the water-falls, and swarms of glistening bubbles and little islands of saffron-colored foam float away upon the dark-brown eddies. At last we reach the carding-mill, which is the lowest of them all--in every sense, it seems, for it is as I had feared: the flume is but a pile of brown and mouldy timbers in the bed of the stream, and the old box-wheel has rotted and fallen from its spokes, almost obscured beneath a rank growth of weeds. No sound of buzzing teasels, no rumbling of the water-wheel, no happy carder singing at his work: _nothing_--but a couple of boys, kneeling in a corner, sucking cider through a straw. Yes, the old mill has fallen from grace; but what else might one expect from a mill in “Devil’s Hollow,” where all its neighbors are engaged in making hogshead staves, and the very water has turned to ruddy wine? [Illustration: THE CIDER MILL.] The carding-machine is gone, and has given place to a rustic cider-press. A temporary undershot-wheel has been rigged beneath the floor, and a rude trough, patched up with sods, conducts the water from the stream.