At last she stopped just as they reached the Winter-bourne, a harmless, innocent-looking little brook, whose violence in winter would have seemed incredible to Jack and Fairy if they had not once had a terrible experience of it. It was when Fairy and Charlie were eight years old. Charlie having seen the brook the day before, swollen and rushing wildly along, challenged Fairy to wade through it; she, unconscious of the change, and remembering it only as a tiny stream which barely covered her little feet, accepted the challenge, declaring it was the easiest thing in the world to do; and the more Charlie protested she would never be able to succeed, the more determined Fairy was to try. But when they reached the bourne and Fairy saw, instead of a tiny brook, an angry stream thirty feet wide, rushing along, and disappearing under the turf, to rise again further on, and, as Charlie told her, run through the priory grounds, where it was deep enough to drown a cow, her heart sank within her. "I told you so," said Charlie; "I said you could not do it, but you would not believe me." "But I will do it. Look here, Charlie, it is not deep here, is it? It can't be, you know, we have often played at mud pies where it is now running; it won't come much above my knees," said Fairy, taking off her shoes and socks. "You had better not go, Fairy. It mayn't be deep, but it is very rapid; you may be carried away with it," urged Charlie. "Bah!" laughed Fairy, dipping her pretty feet into the cold water, and shrieking with delight. "Well, wait a minute till I have taken off my shoes, and we'll go together. It will be up to our waists in the middle, I believe," said Charlie; and the next minute the two children were wading across the angry bourne, laughing and screaming with delight, as each step they took the stream ran stronger and deeper. But as they neared the centre of the stream the laughter ceased, and suddenly a wild shriek from Fairy, who was taken off her feet, rent the air, and, to Charlie's horror, he saw her carried away by the angry stream towards the spot where it disappeared under the turf, a horrid, dark-looking ditch. He rushed back to the shore, hoping to have time to lean over the ditch and catch her before she disappeared under it, but as his feet touched the dry land Jack, who luckily had seen the pair going towards the Winter-bourne from the down where he was watching the sheep, and knowing it to be a dangerous place, had come to order them home. Jack now rushed to the spot, and leaning over the mouth of the ditch, caught Fairy before she was carried under it. Luckily for Charlie, Jack had left his crook behind him, or there is no telling what harm he might have done to the child in his rage; as it was, he seized him, and would have beaten him unmercifully only Fairy cried to him to come and wring the water out of her clothes for her.