se
for the boots, while it sometimes interferes with the skin of the
knuckles, and may result in injury to the nose, is thoroughly enjoyable
and full of excitement while it lasts.

You don't know what a clatter stream is? Then I'll tell you.

Every here and there, where the slate cliffs run down in steep slopes to
the valleys, you can see from the very top to the bottom, that is to say
on a slope of some nine hundred feet, what look like little streams that
are perhaps a foot wide at the top and ten or a dozen at the bottom
where they open out. These are not streams of water, though in wet
weather the water does trickle down through them, and makes them its
bed, but streams of flat, rounded-edge pieces of slate and shale that
have been split off the face of the rock and fallen, to go slowly
gliding down one over the other, perhaps taking years in their journey.
Some of the pieces are as small as the scraps put in the bottom of a
flower-pot, others are as large as house slates and tiles, perhaps
larger; but as they go grinding over one another they are tolerably
smooth, and form a capital arrangement for a slide.

This thing determined upon we each selected a good broad piece big
enough to sit or kneel on, and then began the laborious ascent, which, I
may at once tell you, is the drawback to the enjoyment, for, though the
coming down is delightful, the drag up the steep precipitous slope, with
feet frequently slipping, is so toilsome a task that two or three slides
down used to be always considered what Dr Stacey at Barnstaple School
called _quantum sufficit_.

As a matter of course we were soon tired, but we managed three, starting
from right up at the top, and close after one another, with the stones
beneath us rattling, and sometimes gliding down swiftly, sometimes
coming to a standstill; but if it was the foremost, those behind
generally started him again.

In this case Bob went first, I followed, and Bigley came last, and
though we two stuck more than once, he never did, his weight overcoming
the friction of the stones to such an extent that, towards the last, he
charged down upon us and we all rolled over together into a heap.

We tried again, but the fall had made Bob disagreeable. I don't think
he was much hurt, but he pretended to be, and said that Bigley had done
it on purpose.

It was of no use for Bigley to protest. Once Bob had made up his mind
to a thing he would not give in, so after about half