what there is over the hill?" asked the Hind.

"Not very well, not to tell your ladyship what you want to know," said
the Snipe, "but you'll find the old Wild-duck a bit farther on and
she'll tell 'ee." And he began routling about in the mire again with
his beak.

So they lay down till evening among the turf-pits, and after
travelling a little way farther they reached the very top of the hill
and saw a new world. For before them the high land of the moor plunged
down into a tangle of smaller hills, cut up by great green banks into
innumerable little fields, and seamed and slashed by a hundred wooded
valleys. Fifty miles before them the land rose high again and swelled
up to the tors of Dartmoor, which stood stately and clear and blue
against the sky. But on their right hand the moor seemed to leap at
one bound many miles to the sea; and they saw the white line of the
surf breaking on Bideford Bar, and beyond it Lundy, firm and solid in
mid-sea, and far beyond Lundy the wicked rocky snout of Hartland
Point, purple and gaunt beneath the sinking sun.

The Hind looked anxiously at the wooded valleys beneath their feet,
wondering which she should take; but presently they heard a loud
"Quack, quack, quack," and down she went in the direction of the
sound. And there in a pool of a little stream they found an old Duck,
very prim and matronly, swimming about with her brood all round her,
and the Mallard with them. Whereupon of course the Hind stopped in
her civil way to ask after her and her little Flappers.

"Why, bless 'ee, my lady, they'm getting 'most too big to be called
Flappers," answered the Duck, "and I shall take mun out and down the
river to see the world very soon. They do tell me that some ducks
takes their broods straight to the big waters, but they must be
strange birds, and I don't hold wi' such. 'Twas my Mallard was
a-telling me. What was it you told me you saw down the river, my
dear?"

But the old Mallard was shy and silent; he only mumbled out something
that they could not hear, and swam away apart. Then the old Duck went
on in a whisper: "You see, my lady, he's just a-beginning to change
his coat, and very soon he'll be so dingy as I be for a whole month,
till his new coat cometh. Every year 'tis the same, and he can't abear
it, my lady, for it makes folk think that he's a Duck and no Mallard.
Not but that I think that a Duck's coat is beautiful, but a Mallard's
more beautiful yet, I can't deny that;