ead, and made the water that glided silently along many feet below
look quite dark.

"But that's not the whole of the water which goes over the fall," said
Max wonderingly.

"Every drop. It's narrow, but it's fine and deep, and when it spouts
out it falls on to the stones and spreads round so as to look big--makes
the most of itself. Now then, are you tired?"

"Yes; my legs ache a bit."

"Very well, then, this is the nearest way home."

"I don't understand you."

"Jump in here, and the water would carry you right away down to the
bathing-cave. Scood and I have sent strings of corks down here, and the
stream has carried them right to Dunroe."

"I think I'd rather walk," said Max, smiling.

"So would I. Now come on and see where the water falls."

He led the way, and Max and Scoodrach followed, the latter, who was
musically disposed that morning, taking advantage of the noise made by
the falls to use it as a cloak to cover his own, with the result that
every now and then Max was startled by hearing sounds close behind him
remarkably suggestive of Donald Dhu being close upon their track, armed
with his pipes, and doing battle with all his might.

"Here you are," cried Kenneth, brushing through the last of the hazel
boughs, and standing out on the rock close to the edge of the great
hollow into which the water poured; and the shrinking sensation
increased, as Max joined his friend, and found that there was nothing to
protect him from falling into the great gulf at whose brink they stood.

All this struck him for the moment, but the dread was swept away by the
rush of thought which took its place. For there below, as he gazed down
at the falling water arching from the narrow rift into a stony basin, to
then rush over the sides and fall in a silvery veil, to the deep chasm
fringed with delicate dew--sparkling greenery, amidst whose leaves and
boughs floated upward a cloud of white mist, which kept changing, as the
sun shone upon it, to green and yellow and violet and orange of many
depths of tone, but all dazzlingly bright, one melting into the other
and disappearing to reappear in other rainbow hues.

Far below them, toward where the rugged hollow opened out to allow of
the escape of the water from the falls, Tavish and Long Shon could be
seen, seated on the stones they had chosen, smoking their pipes and
basking in company with the dogs, for the warm rays of a sunny day had
of late been rare.

"There's