“That sounds very romantic,” said Tavia.
“Especially the eating part,” laughed Dorothy. “Riding does give one such an appetite.”
Ledger escorted them into the low hills. Soon they were riding up a sharply inclined gully, and reached higher land. The woods grew denser. Ahead the murmur of falling water soon rose to a steady volume of sound which, although it did not deafen them, made a background for all other noises.
Huge boulders cropped out of the thin soil. The trees were not tall, but were standing in very thick groups. In some places the ponies pushed through thickets that seemed to be almost impassable.
At last a plateau was reached—several hundred feet higher than the knoll upon which the ranch-house stood—and at once, when they came into the clear, Dorothy and Tavia broke into a simultaneous cry of surprise and delight.
Sweeping across this level plain, directly toward them, came a broad, silver stream. Small groves of soft-barked trees fringed its banks. Here and there a boulder intruded, around the base of which the otherwise peaceful river boiled and sprayed the rock with foam.
All the surface of the stream was sparkling as though the banks actually brimmed with molten silver. Such a refreshing looking mountain stream Dorothy had never before seen—or one-half so beautiful.
Just in front of the cavalcade a veil of mist rose some twenty feet into the air. In this mist the sunshine played delightfully, lending itself to a dozen different rainbows.
The almost impalpable moisture drifted across a stretch of grass, as green as it could be—a veritable fairy lawn. The curtain of mist hid from them what appeared to be the abrupt ending of the river.
“What a marvel!” gasped Dorothy. “Why! Mr. Ledger! where does the water go?”