e, especially if he wore the Order of the
Garter!"

"Until that glorious day comes you'll have to dance with poor little me
for a partner," giggled Merle.

"Aren't you all rested? We shall get no blackberries if we don't hurry
on," called Miss Moseley from the other end of the rock.

Everybody scrambled up immediately and set out again over the
bracken-covered hill-side. Another half-mile and they had reached the
bourne of their expedition. The narrow track through the gorse and fern
widened suddenly into a lane, a lane with very high, unmortared walls,
over which grew a variety of bramble with a particularly luscious
fruit. Every connoisseur of blackberries knows what a difference there
is between the little hard seedy ones that commonly flourish in the
hedges and the big juicy ones with the larger leaves. Nature had been
prodigal here, and a bounteous harvest hung within easy reach.

"They are as big as mulberries--and oh, such heaps and heaps!" exclaimed
Addie ecstatically. "No, Merle, you wretch, this is my branch! Don't
poach, you wretch! Go farther on, can't you!"

"I wish we could send the jam to the hospital when it's made," sighed
Merle.

The party spread itself out; some of the girls climbed to the top of the
wall, so that they could reach what grew on the sunnier side, and a few
skirted round over a gate into a field, where a ruined cottage was also
covered with brambles. They worked down the lane by slow degrees,
picking hard as they went. At the end a sudden rushing roar struck upon
the ear, and without even waiting for a signal from Miss Moseley the
girls with one accord hopped over a fence, and ran up a slight incline.
The voice of the waterfall was calling, and the impulse to obey was
irresistible. At the top of the slope they stopped, for they had reached
a natural platform that overlooked the gorge. The scene rivalled one of
the beauty-spots of Switzerland. The Porth Powys stream, flowing between
precipitous rocks, fell two hundred feet in a series of four splendid
cascades. The rugged crags on either side were thickly covered with a
forest of fir and larch, and here and there a taller stone-pine reared
its darker head above the silvery green. Dashing, roaring, leaping,
shouting, the water poured down in a never-ceasing volume: the white
spray rose up in clouds, wetting the girls' faces; the sound was like an
endless chorus of hallelujahs.

"Porth Powys is in fine form to-day. There must have b