But, there, you're a gen'leman, and I s'pose you knows best." "Well, I shall try with it, Sam," said Nic, laughing.
"Ay, sir, do, and good luck to you.

Now I'll get back to my hoeing." Nic shouldered his rod, and with his basket in his hand he left the garden, went round by the wooden building set apart for the men, and then struck across the open ground for the gully, where he soon came upon the tree-bridge he had crossed that moonlight night in company with old Sam; and he could not help hesitating for a few moments as he looked down into the narrow, dark rift, along which the water was rushing far below, while the noise of the waterfall was hollow, reverberating, and strange.
Nic took a long breath, and looked at the tree, which had been felled so that it tumbled right across the rift, and then worked with an adze so as to make a level surface about as wide as an ordinary plank, the lower branches being left on at the sides of the trunk and beneath.
He drew another deep breath, and noted that if he fell, unless he caught at one of these hanging branches, checked himself and managed to climb back, he must drop all that tremendous depth into the black-looking pool of water below.
He drew a third deep breath, and thought that if he had known what the place was like, old Sam would never have got him across, that first night of his coming.
Then he took another long, deeper breath than ever, and said to himself: "If that were a plank laid flat upon the ground I could hop along it upon one leg, so it is only cowardice to hesitate." The next minute he was across, and walking along the other side of the ferny gully, to stop by the waterfall and admire the beauty of the glassy water as it glided over the rocks and fell down into the thick mist, which rose like a cloud toward the overhanging mosses and ferns.
But though the place was attractive enough to have kept him there for hours, and he wondered why he had not come to have a good look at it sooner, he felt that if he meant to catch any fish that day he must be stirring.
There was a well-trodden path along by the river, which beyond the waterfall ran on in a continuation of the gully but here the walls opened out rapidly, till a few hundred yards above it became a lovely little sunny valley, with rocky masses piled near the bed of the little river, made beautiful by the abundant growth.

The ferns were much bigger than any he had yet seen, and the path wound in and out in many a zigzag, now toward the sloping sides of the ravine, now toward the sparkling, torrent-like stream, over which drooped many a bough, as if for the sunshine to rain through in a silver shower upon the water beneath, which flashed gloriously where the bright rays fell.
"I don't wonder at father choosing this place," thought Nic.

"It grows more beautiful every way one goes." He must have wandered and climbed in and out for a couple of miles before he grasped why it was that the path was so well beaten.

A moist spot in a shady part, where the river was just upon his right, showed this, for the narrow track was printed all over by the hoofs of sheep, and he knew now that the footpath was their work, made when in hot weather they had selected the moist shades for grazing; while at a turn a few hundred yards farther on he had an indorsement of his surmise, for the slopes of the valley had grown less abrupt, and as far as he could see one side was dotted with creamy-white fleeces.
And now in the more level ground the torrent had become a swift, bright stream, bubbling and rippling here, swirling round in eddies there, and again becoming dark and deep-looking.
He gazed down into the transparent water, but his research was not rewarded by the sight of dark, gliding forms with sinuous, waving tails.
Still, though no scaly prizes offered themselves for capture, there were plenty of other objects to attract him.