ood at the edge of a huge mass of
rock, gazing through the leaves at the foaming brown water which washed
the base of the natural wall, and eddied and leaped and tore on along
its zigzag bed, onward towards the sea.

From where he stood he gazed straight across at the other side of the
combe, one mass of greens of every tint, here lit up by the sun, there
deep in shadow; while, watered by the soft moist air and mists which
rose from below, everything he gazed upon was rich and luxuriant in the
extreme.

"The rain must have been tremendous up in the moor," thought the young
man, as he gazed down into the lovely gully at the rushing water, which
on the previous day had been a mere string of stony pools connected by a
trickling stream, some of them deep and dark, the haunts of the salmon
which came up in their season from the sea. "What a change! Yesterday,
all as clear as crystal; now, quite a golden brown."

Then, thinking of how the salmon must be taking advantage of the little
flood to run up higher to their spawning-grounds among the hills, Nic
turned off to his right to follow a rugged track along the cliff-like
side, sometimes low down, sometimes high up; now in deep shadow, now in
openings where the sun shot through to make the hurrying waters sparkle
and flash.

The young man went on and on for quite a quarter of a mile, with the
sullen roar increasing till it became one deep musical boom; and,
turning a corner where a portion of the cliff overhung the narrow path,
and long strands of ivy hung down away from the stones, he stepped out
of a green twilight into broad sunshine, to stand upon a shelf of rock,
gazing into a circular pool some hundred feet across.

Here was the explanation of the deep, melodious roar. For, to his
right, over what resembled a great eight-foot-high step in the valley,
the whole of the little river plunged down from the continuation of the
gorge, falling in one broad cascade in a glorious curve right into the
pool, sending up a fine spray which formed a cloud, across which, like a
bridge over the fall, the lovely tints of a rainbow played from time to
time.

It was nothing new to Nic, that amphitheatre, into which he had gazed
times enough ever since he was a child; but it had never seemed more
lovely, nor the growth which fringed it from the edge of the water to
fifty or sixty feet above his head more beautiful and green.

But he had an object in coming, and, following the shel