ll which came splashing down forming pool after pool in
the sunny rocks.

It was not to be expected that three boys fresh from school could pass
that falling stream without leaping from rock to rock, and penetrating a
hundred yards inland, to see if we could find a dipper's nest, for one
of the little cock-tailed blackbirds gave us a glimpse of his white
collar as he dropped upon a stone, and then walked into a pool, in whose
clear depths we could see him scudding about after the insects at the
bottom, and seeming to fly through the water as he beat his little
rounded wings using them as a fish does fins.

The nest was too cleverly hidden for us to find, so, tiring of the
little stream, and knowing that there was one waiting for us in the Gap
where we could capture trout, we went on along the cliff path, gossiping
as boys will, till we reached the great buttress of rock that formed one
side of the entrance to the little ravine, and there perched ourselves
upon the great fragments of rock to look down at where the little stream
came rushing and sparkling from the inland hills till it nearly reached
the sea at the mouth of the Gap, and then came to a sudden end.

It looked curious, but it was a familiar object to us, who thought
nothing of the way in which the sea had rolled up a bank of boulders and
large pebbles right across the little river, forming a broad path when
the tide was down, and as the little river reached it the bright clear
stream ended, for its waters sank down through the pebbles and passed
invisibly for the next thirty or forty yards beneath the beach and into
the sea.

But when the tide was up this pebble ridge formed a bar, over which
there was just room for Uggleston's lugger to pass at high-water; and
there it was now in the little river, kept from turning down on its side
by a couple of props, while the water rippled about its keel.

From where we were perched it looked no bigger than a row-boat, and the
house that formed our school-fellow's home--a long, low, stone-built
place thatched with reeds--seemed as if it had been built for dolls,
while the fisherman's cottage on the other side, where an old sailor
friend lived, was apparently about as big as a box.

The scene was beautiful, but to us boys its beauty lay in what it
offered us in the way of amusement.

We were not long in deciding upon a ride down one of the clatter
streams--a ride that, though it is very bad for the breeches and wor