THE THREE BLACK PONDS At the bottom of the valley, approached by sunken honeysuckle lanes that seemed winding into the centre of the earth, lay three black ponds, almost hidden in a _cul-de-sac_ of woodland.

Though long since appropriated by nature, made her own by moss and rooted oaks, they were so set one below the other, with green causeways between each, that an ancient art, long since become nature, had evidently designed and dug them, years, perhaps centuries, ago.

So long dead were the old pond-makers that great trees grew now upon the causeways, and vast jungles of rush and water grasses choked the trickling overflows from one pond to the other.

Once, it was said, when the earth of those parts had been rich in iron, these ponds had driven great hammers,--but long before the memory of the oldest cottager they had rested from their labours, and lived only the life of beauty and silence.

Where iron had once been was now the wild rose, and the grim wounds of the earth had been healed by the kisses of five hundred springs.
About these ponds stole many a secret path, veined with clumsy roots, shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat.