e five feet high, overhanging loamily; but on the other side it
is flat, pebbly, and fit to land upon. Now the large boys take the small
boys, crying sadly for mercy, and thinking mayhap, of their mothers,
with hands laid well at the back of their necks, they bring them up to
the crest of the bank upon the eastern side, and make them strip their
clothes off. Then the little boys, falling on their naked knees, blubber
upwards piteously; but the large boys know what is good for them, and
will not be entreated. So they cast them down, one after other into the
splash of the water, and watch them go to the bottom first, and then
come up and fight for it, with a blowing and a bubbling. It is a very
fair sight to watch when you know there is little danger, because,
although the pool is deep, the current is sure to wash a boy up on the
stones, where the end of the depth is. As for me, they had no need to
throw me more than once, because I jumped of my own accord, thinking
small things of the Lowman, after the violent Lynn. Nevertheless, I
learnt to swim there, as all the other boys did; for the greatest point
in learning that is to find that you must do it. I loved the water
naturally, and could not long be out of it; but even the boys who hated
it most, came to swim in some fashion or other, after they had been
flung for a year or two into the Taunton pool.

But now, although my sister Annie came to keep me company, and was not
to be parted from me by the tricks of the Lynn stream, because I put her
on my back and carried her across, whenever she could not leap it, or
tuck up her things and take the stones; yet so it happened that neither
of us had been up the Bagworthy water. We knew that it brought a good
stream down, as full of fish as of pebbles; and we thought that it must
be very pretty to make a way where no way was, nor even a bullock came
down to drink. But whether we were afraid or not, I am sure I cannot
tell, because it is so long ago; but I think that had something to do
with it. For Bagworthy water ran out of Doone valley, a mile or so from
the mouth of it.

But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into good
small-clothes, buckled at the knee, and strong blue worsted hosen,
knitted by my mother, it happened to me without choice, I may say, to
explore the Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise.

My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to eat much; and there
is nothing that frightens u