“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.