The next morning after deep rains in a hill-country is a morning of wonders; if you can go out among them, and know where to find them. Down the ravines, from the far back, greater heights, rush and plunge the streams whitened with ecstasy, turned to sweet wild harmonies as they go. It is a day of glory for the water-drops that are born to make a part of it. Sylvie knew the way down through the glen, from fall to fall, half a mile apart. She and Bob Jeffords had come down to them, time and again; after nearly every little summer shower; for with all the heat, the night rains had been plentiful and frequent, and the water-courses had been kept full. The brick-fields, that looked so near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands between the Jeffords' place and the Basin. "The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered. They climbed up rocky slopes, on which the short gray moss grew, cushiony. They followed the line of maples and alders and evergreens that sentineled and hid away the shouting stream, spreading their skirts and intertwining their arms to shelter it, like the privacy of some royal child at play, and to keep back from the pilgrims the beautiful surprise. Upon a rough table-ledge, they came to it at last; the place where they could lean in between the trees, and overlook and underlook the shining tumult,--the shifting, yet enduring apparition of delight. It came in two leaps, down a winding channel, through which it seemed to turn and spring, like some light, graceful, impetuous living creature. You _felt_ it reach the first rock-landing; you were conscious of the impetus which forced it on to take the second spring which brought it down beneath your feet. And it kept coming--coming. It was an eternal moment; a swift, vanishing, yet never over-and-done movement of grace and splendor. That is the magic of a waterfall. Something exquisite by very suggestion of evanescence, caught _in transitu_, and held for the eye and mind to dwell on. They were never tired of looking. The chance would not come,--that ought to be a pause,--for them to turn and go away. "But there are more," Sylvie said at length, admonishing them. "And the Second Cataract is grander than this." "You number them going down," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Yes. People always number things as they come to them, don't they? Our first is somebody's else last, I suppose, always." "What a little spirit that is!" said Christopher Kirkbright to Miss Euphrasia, dropping back to help his sister down a rocky plunge.