what remained of the original structure was patched up and considerably
enlarged. Now, as I saw it in the dusk, it seemed a very ghost-haunted
place. The building had not fallen into ruin; it was still roofed, and
might easily have been made habitable; but there was no glass in the
windows; all the rooms were silent with that silence so deep and sad of the
long-deserted house which is not sufficiently wrecked by time and decay
to have lost the pathos of human associations. The breath of the dying
twilight stirred the ivy leaves upon the wall of the detached chapel where
never a person had prayed for many a year, and the goblin bats came out
from the shadowy places to flutter against the pale sky. Then I felt that
I had lingered long enough on this desolate spot, and the thought of the
awaking hearths brightening the little town with the blaze of wood made me
hasten through the heather and gorse that had grown up on the grave of many
a vine.

The next morning saw me afloat again. As I was getting away from the shore
a man called out to me: 'Your boat is worth nothing! If you try to pass the
third bridge you will go to the bottom!'

He spoke very seriously, and I wished to take further counsel of him; but
having once got into the current, it carried me off at such a rate that
while I was thinking of putting a question I was taken out of speaking
distance. I shot through one of the arches of the first bridge, and soon
found myself in water that was a little rough for my poor skiff. Here were
the rapids again. I had been warned against these before I left the inn.
There was no turning back now, and if the commotion of water had been ever
so great I should have had to take my chance in it. The Otter's advice
when I came to rapids was to pull as hard as I could in the middle of the
current. I followed it, and my shallow boat, which had just been described
as worthless, darted into the midst of the turmoil, and went through it