up. Much more was this the case with foot-passengers. All the light-
footed tourists, all the pedlars laden with strange wares, were tending
downward like the river that accompanied their path. Nor was this all;
for when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose over a great part of
the world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earth
rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around
the coil of battle terrified good people from their labours in the field.
Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at last
one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and
for three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard,
kept pouring downward past the mill. All day the child stood and watched
them on their passage--the rhythmical stride, the pale, unshaven faces
tanned about the eyes, the discoloured regimentals and the tattered
flags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and wonder; and all
night long, after he was in bed, he could hear the cannon pounding and
the feet trampling, and the great armament sweeping onward and downward
past the mill. No one in the valley ever heard the fate of the
expedition, for they lay out of the way of gossip in those troublous
times; but Will saw one thing plainly, that not a man returned. Whither
had they all gone? Whither went all the tourists and pedlars with
strange wares? whither all the brisk barouches with servants in the
dicky? whither the water of the stream, ever coursing downward and ever
renewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down the valley, and
carried the dead leaves along with it in the fall. It seemed like a
great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate; they all went downward,
fleetly and gaily downward, and only he, it seemed, remained behind, like
a stock upon the wayside. It sometimes made him glad when he noticed how
the fishes kept their heads up stream. They, at least, stood faithfully
by him, while all else were posting downward to the unknown world.

One evening he asked the miller where the river went.

'It goes down the valley,' answered he, 'and turns a power of mills--six
score mills, they say, from here to Unterdeck--and is none the wearier
after all. And then it goes out into the lowlands, and waters the great
corn country, and runs through a sight of fine cities (so they say) where
kings live all alone in great palaces, with a sen