along, conscious of little but that Nature, in providing store of
water-rats, had thoughtfully furnished provender of right-sized
stones. Rapids, also, there were, telling of canoes and
portages--crinkling bays and inlets--caves for pirates and hidden
treasures--the wise Dame had forgotten nothing--till at last,
after what lapse of time I know not, my further course, though
not the stream's, was barred by some six feet of stout wire
netting, stretched from side to side, just where a thick hedge,
arching till it touched, forbade all further view.

The excitement of the thing was becoming thrilling. A Black Flag
must surely be fluttering close by. Here was evidently a
malignant contrivance of the Pirates, designed to baffle our gun-
boats when we dashed up-stream to shell them from their lair. A
gun-boat, indeed, might well have hesitated, so stout was the
netting, so close the hedge: but I spied where a rabbit was wont
to pass, close down by the water's edge; where a rabbit could go
a boy could follow, albeit stomach-wise and with one leg in the
stream; so the passage was achieved, and I stood inside, safe but
breathless at the sight.

Gone was the brambled waste, gone the flickering tangle of
woodland. Instead, terrace after terrace of shaven sward, stone-
edged, urn-cornered, stepped delicately down to where the stream,
now tamed and educated, passed from one to another marble basin,
in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among
the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous
in the brooding noonday sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped
on the lawn, no fish leapt in the pools, nor bird declared
himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed it was here,