, I will
show you how she is digging out the glen with this very mist which is
hanging about our feet. At least, so I guess.

For see how the mist clings to the points of the heather leaves, and
makes drops. If the hot sun came out the drops would dry, and they would
vanish into the air in light warm steam. But now that it is dark and
cold they drip, or run down the heather-stems, to the ground. And
whither do they go then? Whither will the water go,--hundreds of gallons
of it perhaps,--which has dripped and run through the heather in this
single day? It will sink into the ground, you know. And then what will
become of it? Madam How will use it as an underground spade, just as she
uses the rain (at least, when it rains too hard, and therefore the rain
runs off the moor instead of sinking into it) as a spade above ground.

Now come to the edge of the glen, and I will show you the mist that fell
yesterday, perhaps, coming out of the ground again, and hard at work.

You know of what an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all these glens
are. How the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep rounded bank, almost
like the crest of a wave--ready like a wave-crest to fall over, and as
you know, falling over sometimes, bit by bit, where the soil is bare.

Oh, yes; you are very fond of those banks. It is "awfully jolly," as you
say, scrambling up and down them, in the deep heath and fern; besides,
there are plenty of rabbit-holes there, because they are all sand; while
there are no rabbit-holes on the flat above, because it is all gravel.

Yes; you know all about it: but you know, too, that you must not go too
far down these banks, much less roll down them, because there is almost
certain to be a bog at the bottom, lying upon a gentle slope; and there
you get wet through.

All round these hills, from here to Aldershot in one direction, and from
here to Windsor in another, you see the same shaped glens; the wave-crest
along their top, and at the foot of the crest a line of springs which run
out over the slopes, or well up through them in deep sand-galls, as you
call them--shaking quagmires which are sometimes deep enough to swallow
up a horse, and which you love to dance upon in summer time. Now the
water of all these springs is nothing but the rain, and mist, and dew,
which has sunk down first through the peaty soil, and then through the
gravel and sand, and there has stopped. And why? Because under the
gravel (abou