The milkstand arose leisurely. Silas Long shouldered his telescope, Jake Sawyer slung his orphan over his back, and the group turned up Cameron's lane, crossed the orchard, and went down the winding pathway into the ravine.
The little stream danced along at their side, touched here and there with the gold of the sunset, the vesper sparrows had gathered for their twilight chorus, and the valley was vibrating with music.
No matter at what hour of the day, or season of the year, it might be viewed, the ravine where the mill-stream ran was a treasure-house to any one who had the seeing eye. Long before, when Elmbrook was merely a "Corners," with one or two houses, there came to the place a queer Englishman, who wandered all day about the fields, and painted pictures and read strange, dry books by a man named Ruskin. He first entered the valley on an October morning, when it was all gold and crimson, and lay shrouded in a soft violet mist. The man had sat for hours gazing down the winding stream, and afterward he had said it was the Golden River, and that the place should be called Treasure Valley. But Sandy McQuarry's father, who was living then, said that onybody with a head on him could see that it was clean ridic'l'us to give a place such a daft name. McQuarry's Corners it had been called for years, and McQuarry's Corners it would stay. The queer Englishman left, and was never heard of again, and old Sandy died, and when the post-office came old lady Cameron named the place Elmbrook; but Treasure Valley still remained with the little Golden River flowing through it, showing new beauties with every recurring season.
About a mile below the village the walls of the ravine disappeared, and the brook was lost in a deep swamp, a maze of tangled foliage and deep pools and idly wandering streams. As the water advanced the forest became submerged, and formed a desolate stretch known as the Drowned Lands. Its slimy, green surface was dotted with rotten stumps and fantastic tree-trunks, pitched together in wild confusion, and above it rose a drear, dead forest of tall pine stems, bleached and scarred, and stripped of every limb. Around this silent, ghostly place the swamp formed a ring through which it was dangerous to pass, for near the edge of the Drowned Lands it was honeycombed with mud holes, into which it was sure death to slip. Terrible tales were related of lives lost in this swamp. Folks said that a banshee or a will-o'-the-wisp, or some such fearsome creature, wandered to and fro at nights over the surface of the desolate waters, waving her pale lantern and calling for help, or in other ways enticing unwary travelers to their death. Some had been lured into the depths by her voice and had never returned.
It was in this drear, lonely place that the tramp had taken up his abode. Just where a corduroy road, now abandoned and grass-grown, passed out of the ravine and along the edge of the swamp, stood Sandy McQuarry's old lumber shanty, and here Uncle Hughie Cameron and the doctor had taken John McIntyre. Before it lay the swamp, and through occasional gaps gleamed the still waters of the Drowned Lands.
As the visitors emerged from the valley there was a loud hallo from the hill-top, and a small, limping figure came hurrying down the slope. The little fellow perched upon Jake Sawyer's shoulder gave a squeal of welcome, and Jake's face lit up.
"Hello, you, Tim!" called the big man cordially, as the youngster came limping toward him, "what you been up to now?"
The boy glanced around the group and placed himself as far as possible from Spectacle John. "Jist been fishin'," he remarked vaguely; "and I'm goin' with you," he added, with that mixture of defiance and appeal which the orphans had already learned was sure to move their foster-parents.
"Ye'd better watch out! The banshee'll git ye," threatened Spectacle John.
"Speakin' o' a banshee," put in the blacksmith, "when I was at Neeag'ra Falls——" By the time the story was finished the company had come in view of the old shanty.