Like a sponge, the hillside
oozed with well-water. The burn kept growing both in force and
volume; at every leap it fell with heavier plunges and span more
widely in the pool. Great had been the labours of that stream, and
great and agreeable the changes it had wrought. It had cut through
dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a blowing dolphin, spouted
through the orifice; along all its humble coasts, it had undermined
and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the forest; and on these
rough clearings it now set and tended primrose gardens, and planted
woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver birch. Through
all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte, conducted
our two wanderers downward, - Otto before, still pausing at the more
difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following. From
time to time, when he turned to help her, her face would lighten
upon his - her eyes, half desperately, woo him. He saw, but dared
not understand. 'She does not love me,' he told himself, with
magnanimity. 'This is remorse or gratitude; I were no gentleman,
no, nor yet a man, if I presumed upon these pitiful concessions.'
Some way down the glen, the stream, already grown to a good bulk of
water, was rudely dammed across, and about a third of it abducted in
a wooden trough. Gaily the pure water, air's first cousin, fleeted
along the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green
with grasses.
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