But you leave them behind, and come out into the sunshine, in a little
green glade which might be the ballroom of the fairy queen. On your
right, gleaming through clumps of alder and black birch, is a pond,--the
home of cardinal flowers and gleaming jewel-weed; a little farther on, a
thicket of birch and maple, from which comes a musical sound of falling
water. Follow this sound, keeping to the path, which winds away to the
left. Stop! now you may step aside for a moment, and part the heavy
hanging branches, and look, where the water falls over a high black
wall, into a sombre pool, shut in by fantastic rocks, and shaded from
all sunshine by a dense fringe of trees. This is the milldam, and the
pond above is no natural one, but the enforced repose and outspreading
of a merry brown brook, which now shows its true nature, and escaping
from the gloomy pool, runs scolding and foaming down through a
wilderness of rocks and trees. You cannot follow it there,--though I
have often done so in my barefoot days,--so come back to the path again.
There are pines overhead now, and the ground is slippery with the fallen
needles, and the air is sweet--ah! how sweet!--with their warm
fragrance. See! here is the old mill itself, now disused and falling to
decay. Here the path becomes a little precipice, and you must scramble
as best you can down two or three rough steps, and round the corner of
the ruined mill. This is a millstone, this great round thing like a
granite cheese, half buried in the ground; and here is another, which
makes a comfortable seat, if you are tired.
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