me FOOT OF SI<A<BOT> 



DOWN a great hollow in the hills, under banks that are 

 hung with ferns and lingering foxgloves, with golden- 

 rod and harebells, and all the flowers of the late summer, 

 rushes a swift mountain stream. Here it chafes among 

 boulders that were shaped and rounded and, it may be, 

 strewn here by the glaciers that have left their mark 

 along the wall ; now it loiters through a silver lake set 

 round with reeds and lilies, the haunt of the wild duck 

 and the heron ; and now it plunges headlong over a 

 rocky steep beneath a white mist of foam. Its troubled 

 waters bear no barges to the sea ; no mill-wheel flashes 

 in its w r hirling stream a turbulent, untamed, head- 

 strong river. 



In the brief harvest weather, when the hay was down 

 on the meadow by its shore, the dwindling torrent sank 

 into its channel until the broken threads of silver seemed 

 to creep along among the boulders as if fearing to be 

 seen. Bars of grey shingle checked its feeble flow. 

 The trout were crowded in its clear, still pools. 



