Among fig trees and pomegranates, and so leaving the garden, along the dry slippery grass, towards the hoarse rushing river, both silent till they reached it.

There is a silence that is golden.
They stood gazing on the foaming tide an instant, and then Alice said,-- "My father and Sam will come home by the track across there.

Shall we cross and meet them?
We can get over just below." A little lower down, all the river was collected into one headlong race; and a giant tree, undermined by winter floods, had fallen from one bank to the other, offering a giddy footway across the foaming water.
"Now," said Alice, "if you will go over, I will follow you." So he ran across, and then looked back to see the beautiful figure tripping fearlessly over, with outstretched arms, and held out his great brown hand to take her tiny fingers as she stepped down from the upturned roots on to the soft white sand.

He would like to have taken them again, to help her up the bank, but she sprang up like a deer, and would not give him the opportunity.

Then they had a merry laugh at the magpie, who had fluttered down all this way before them, to see if they were on a foraging expedition, and if there were any plunder going, and now could not summon courage to cross the river, but stood crooning and cursing by the brink.