“What will Miss Honnor do in a spate like that?” Lionel inquired of the head keeper.  “Will she go out at all?”

“Oh, ay, Miss Honnor will go out,” Roderick made answer; “but she will only be able to fish the tail-ends o’ the pools—­ay, and it will not be easy to put a fly over the water, unless the wind goes down a bit.”

“But do you mean she will go out on a day like this?” he demanded again—­as he looked at the wild skies and the thundering river.

“Oh, ay, if there’s a chance at ahl Miss Honnor will be out,” said Roderick, and he added, with a demure smile, “even if the chentlemen will be for staying at home.”

However, Lionel had soon to consider his own attitude towards this swollen stream, when it became necessary to ford it on the hither side of the Bad Step.  To tell the truth, when he regarded that racing current, he did not like the look of it at all.

“I don’t see how we are to get across,” he said, with some hesitation.

“Maggie knaws the weh,” Roderick made answer, with a bit of a laugh.

“Yes, that’s all very well,” said the mounted huntsman.  “I dare say she knows the way; but if she gets knocked over in the middle of the current, what is to become of me, or of her either?”

“She’ll manage it, sir,” said the keeper, confidently, “never fear.”

Lionel was just on the point of saying, “Well, you come yourself and ride her across, and I’ll go over the Bad Step on foot,” but he did not like to show the white feather; so, somewhat apprehensively, he turned the old pony’s head to the river-bank.  And very soon he found that old Maggie knew much better what she was about than he did; for, as soon as she felt the weight of the water, she did not attempt to go straight across; she deliberately turned her head down-stream, put her buttocks against the force of the current, and thus sideways, and very cautiously, and with many a thrilling stumble and catching up again, she proceeded to ford this whirling Aivron.  Never once did she expose herself broadside; her hind-legs were really doing most of the fight; and right gratefully did Lionel clap the neck of this wise beast when he found himself on solid land.  The ford farther up was much less dangerous; and so once again the reunited party held on its way.

Then here was the Geinig—­no longer the pretty and picturesque river that he knew, but a boiling and surging torrent sweeping in red wrath down its narrow and rocky channel.  The farther heights, too, that now came into view, had lost their wonted pale and ethereal hues:  there were no soft cloud-stains on the purple slopes of heather—­a darkness dwelt over the land.  As he gradually got up into that wilder country, the gloom grew more intense, the desolation more awful.  The roar of the Geinig was lost now in this dreadful silence.  He seemed to have left behind him all human sympathies and associations—­to have forsaken his kindred and his kind—­to