"Not as well as my aunt."

"Well, do thy best, and thou wilt win favour with the baron."

The evening began to advance, and Christina was very weary, as the
purple mountains that she had long watched with a mixture of fear and
hope began to look more distinct, and the ground was often in abrupt
ascents. Her father, without giving space for complaints, hurried
her on. He must reach the Debateable Ford ere dark. It was,
however, twilight when they came to an open space, where, at the foot
of thickly forest-clad rising ground, lay an expanse of turf and rich
grass, through which a stream made its way, standing in a wide
tranquil pool as if to rest after its rough course from the
mountains. Above rose, like a dark wall, crag upon crag, peak on
peak, in purple masses, blending with the sky; and Hugh, pointing
upwards to a turreted point, apparently close above their heads,
where a star of light was burning, told her that there was
Adlerstein, and this was the Debateable Ford.

In fact, as he explained, while splashing through the shallow
expanse, the stream had changed its course. It was the boundary
between the lands of Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, but it had within
the last sixty years burst forth in a flood, and had then declined to
return to its own bed, but had flowed in a fresh channel to the right
of the former one. The Freiherren von Adlerstein claimed the ground
to the old channel, the Graffen von Schlangenwald held that the river
was the landmark; and the dispute had a greater importance than
seemed explained from the worth of the rushy space of ground in
question, for this was the passage of the Italian merchants on their