"Where is that?" said Ellen, stopping short.
" 'Way down down, at the bottom there. It's the brook."
"What brook? Not the same that goes by Aunt Fortune's?"
"Yes, it's the very same. It's the crookest thing you ever saw. It runs over there," said the speaker, pointing with her arm, "and then it takes a turn and goes that way, and then it comes round so, and then it shoots off in that way again and passes by your house; and after that, the dear knows where it goes, for I don't. But I don't suppose it could run straight, if it was to try to."
"Can't we get down to it?" said Ellen.
"To be sure we can, unless you're as afraid of steep banks as you are of fences."
Very steep indeed it was, and strewn with loose stones; but Ellen did not falter here, and though once or twice in imminent danger of exchanging her cautious stepping for one long roll to the bottom, she got there safely on her two feet. When there, everything was forgotten in delight. It was a wild little place. The high, close sides of the dell left only a little strip of sky overhead; and at their feet ran the brook, much more noisy and lively here than where Ellen had before made its acquaintance; leaping from rock to rock, eddying round large stones, and boiling over the small ones, and now and then pouring quietly over some great trunk of a tree that had fallen across its bed and dammed up the whole stream. Ellen could scarcely contain herself at the magnificence of many of the waterfalls, the beauty of the little quiet pools where the water lay still behind some large stone, and the variety of graceful tiny cascades.
"Look here, Nancy!" cried Ellen; "that's the Falls of Niagara do you see? that large one; oh, that is splendid! And this will do for Trenton Falls what a fine foam it makes! isn't it a beauty? And what shall we call this? I don't know what to call it; I wish we could name them all. But there's no end to them. Oh, just look at that one! That's too pretty not to have a name; what shall it be?"
"Black Falls," suggested the other.
"Black," said Ellen, dubiously, "why! I don't like that."