"Don't you see, you stupid man, that the stream has made the glen, and
the earth which runs down the stream was all once part of the hill on
which you stand." I confess I was very much ashamed of myself when she
said that. For that is the history of the whole mystery. Madam How is
digging away with her soft spade, water. She has a harder spade, or
rather plough, the strongest and most terrible of all ploughs; but that,
I am glad to say, she has laid by in England here.

Water? But water is too simple a thing to have dug out all this great
glen.

My dear child, the most wonderful part of Madam How's work is, that she
does such great things and so many different things, with one and the
same tool, which looks to you so simple, though it really is not so.
Water, for instance, is not a simple thing, but most complicated; and we
might spend hours in talking about water, without having come to the end
of its wonders. Still Madam How is a great economist, and never wastes
her materials. She is like the sailor who boasted (only she never
boasts) that, if he had but a long life and a strong knife, he would
build St. Paul's Cathedral before he was done. And Madam How has a very
long life, and plenty of time; and one of the strongest of all her tools
is water. Now if you will stoop down and look into the heather, I will
show you how she is digging out the glen with this very mist which is
hanging about our feet. At least, so I guess.

For see how the mist clings to the points of the heather leaves, and
makes drops. If the hot sun came out the drops would dry, and they would
vanish into the air in light warm steam. But now that it is dark and
cold they drip, or run down the heather-stems, to the ground. And
whither do they go then? Whither will the water go,--hundreds of gallons