Now the story leaves those great kings and their wars, to tell of Thorstein Sweinson, and how he went up the river Crake, and how he found the great water at the river-head: the same that old folk call Thurston-water, and we mostly call Coniston lake, from the name of our village hard by it.

In the year after the ravaging of Scotland, Thorstein was eleven winters old, and a great lad: sturdy at all games of strength, and skilful enough in all kinds of work that a lad was set to do. He could catch a nag on the fell, and ride it home through the heather; make an arrow, and shoot it to the mark: handle the smith’s tools or the woodwright’s: swim, and row, wrestle and race with his brothers, and often beat them, and always beat the thralls’ boys. Most of all he took pleasure in going about with the herds, to look after the beasts and the sheep on the summer-hills: and when they were once out and away, he would egg them on to take him farther, to see the little dells and winding valleys on either side of the Crake, as if he might find there something of the great world which he had heard about and longed to wander through.

It was nigh upon seven years since the wild men of the fells had made their last raid and carried off the thrall’s son: but still Swein would often warn his boys to keep within sight of home, and bid them stay by their mother if he himself were abroad. But he might as well have warned the smoke not to go out of the chimney. For northern blood stirred in the lads: and Thorstein often looked down the firth to seaward, and wished he were big enough to go viking in a ship of his own. Orm said he would go with him if it were trading he meant: and thought that they might make a deal of money by selling the thralls’ children. Upon which Thorstein hit him in the face, and said, “Thou shan’t get our little May-queen for one.” And he spoke no more of his plans to Orm.

Hundi was a better friend to Thorstein, and they talked a deal together of the travels they should take and the deeds they should do. There were those great mountains in the far distance, always beckoning to them; peopled with giants and fairies,—had not their father often told them of the stone man that kept the road beyond Grasmere? and had they not the dim remembrance, not easily let die, of the red giant? They knew by hearsay of wide lakes among the fells, lying all alone for the first adventurer to take and hold. The beck that flowed through their fields, and the greater Leven that they could see from the howe or from Legbarrow winding far away among the hills, came down, so the Welshmen said, out of wide waters full of fish and haunted by fowl in countless flocks. And as they sat on the rocks at Crakemouth when the tide was low moulding clay arrowheads in the rune-shaped clifts and chinks of the smooth rock, they wondered what troll or fairy had been there with chisel and mallet, and what more marvellous marvel there might be to find in the unknown wilds beyond. Crake, Cregiog as their Welsh called it, the rocky river, came down night and day, sometimes fierce and swollen, sometimes faint and shrunken, but always singing over its rocks the same song of enticement. “If we could only track the beck,” they said, “and find the great water, and take the fish and fowl, and build a house by the shore and make a boat!”

So at last the wish grew into a plan, and the plan into a purpose. When nobody was looking they were to slip away: follow the Crake to its mere, take the land about it, and make a backwood bigging of their own. They filled a bag with meal, took their knives in their belts, and set off one morning early, as though they were going for a day with the shepherds. But where the fields ended, they took the path to the outlying folds: and when they were near the folds, they turned through the woods to the river, so that they might not be seen, and scrambled for a great way up the stony channel. It was only half filled, because, as often happens in those parts, the spring had been dry, and the rainy weather was yet to come on, after the days began to shorten.

For a while it was easy work: there is a flat shore on the left hand, and they could run over the shingle even where the water went swiftly and fell in eddies and foam over rock-ridges. But soon the hills on either side close in: the banks are steep: the river foams beneath thick trees which spread their branches, making the squirrel’s bridge overhead. Thus it is even nowadays, but in yon old times in many places great firs had fallen right across the deep channel, or huge oaks had lost their hold of the rocky bank from very weight of age, and had rolled into the torrent, to be weirs and dams that held the water and flooded the banks: so that what with the swamp, wherever there was a bit of flat shore, and what with the rock walls, or the slippery sodden tufts of moss and fern, wherever the gill-banks were brant, the lads made but little way. And whoever has stood upon Spark Brig and looked up-bank and down-bank, and dreamt over a time when all the mills and houses were unbuilt, and the land uncleared, and nothing but wild timber, dank and dense, filled the dale, with the logs that rotted where they fell, and the brambles and creepers that matted the growing trunks together: and wild bulls and wild boars, wolves and cats, hag-worms and lizards, and maybe a bear or two, tenanted the place:—he will know what the adventure of those two boys was like. And whoever has fought his way up one of our moorland gills where the land is still rough, will know how they stumbled over the shallows, and scrambled over the boulders, and waded the mires, and swam the dubs, as they came through the jaws of Crake, and out into the easier ground by the eyot beneath Lowick Green, as it is now. There, if the river was less rough, the trees were still thick and the banks steep: and on the right hand the fells seemed to come nearer: and standing out through the black fir-trees high over head, white brows of crag seemed to frown and nod above them, as they sat on a great stone in mid-stream to take their breath.

The king-fishers flitted past, blue flashes in the green gloom. Where a ray of sunshine came in through the vault of trees overhead and pierced the brown water, they could see, beneath mossy rocks fringed with fern, little dippers running over the bottom among the trout, and as free as if they were on dry land, for all the rushing of the water. Now and again a wild animal ran down to drink, and started back crashing into the wood: but there was no sign of houses, nor of men dwelling in this uncouth wilderness.

They toiled on again, mounting the stream where it breaks over long-drawn ledges, around a rocky eyot at a sharp bend, and through a swampy tarn (as it was then) till they came to the spot where Lowick bridge now stands. It was high noon. They sat down on the steep bank above the swamp; and taking handfuls of the meal from their bag, soaked it with the clear fresh water and made their dinner. When it was done, said Hundi, “Well, old forge-ahead, how much farther? For my part I call the shepherds’ tales all Welsh lies. There is no great water that we can see, only this dirty puddle: and we shall have work enough to get home before supper-time, down the screes we have climbed and this waste of rubbish.”

“Nay,” said Thorstein, “the beck must come from somewhere, and I mean to see the end of it.”

“What, and sleep in a tree like a squirrel?”

“Why not, if I must, thou slug-a-bed? The nights are short and warm enough.”

“Well then,” said Hundi, “I will sit on the howe over there, and wait until the conquering hero comes back. I’ll count a hundred, and then.”

“And then go home like a wise lad to thy mother, and say Thorstein is coming to-morrow with news, and a great fish out of Thorstein’s mere; for it will be none of Hundi’s.”

“Hundi’s howe is here, Thorstein’s mere is nowhere.” And indeed afterwards the story says that Hundi lived hard by, and was in the end buried on that howe: but that is still to tell.—Said he, “A wilful beast must gang his own gate, and I’ll not mar sport, nor splash thy mere to frighten thy whales. Come, Thorstein, don’t be a fool. Turn back with me now, or rue it!”

“Neither, dear lad: and don’t anger me, but hie thy ways home, and bid them not worry. Happen I’ll light on my journey’s end sooner than we think for.”

“Happen thou’ll light on mischief sooner than thou think’st for. Come along, I say.”

“Go along, I say. We can’t miss the road, for its down-bank for thee and up-bank for me to the end.”

“Nay, that’s an ill speech,” said Hundi, “for parting.”

“Well then, home for thee, and away in the wide world for me, for evermore. Will that suit?”

“Nor that either. I wish thee luck, and thy big fish: and I’ll foreset the scolding that awaits thee: and have thy breakfast kept warm: for yon bag of meal will be gone before to-morrow, if I know aught.”

“Good lad, then; we part friends:” and Hundi turned and slid down the bank and splashed down stream: for he was always an easy-going lad.

But Thorstein toiled on as before, and found his work no less, at first: for he had to win his way up Lowick force and through the swamps at its head. But then he saw, at last, rising above the trees, a crest and a cone, of high rugged fells, distant indeed, but not a mere blue line as he had seen them from the heights of Greenodd. The afternoon sun threw its lights and shadows on the great scars of Dowcrags, and the rocks of the Coniston Old Man stood out bold in the blue air.

The lad’s heart leapt up, and he shouted as he plunged again in the rapids that swirled beneath the wild steeps on his right, and the long dark slopes of Blawith, the Blue-wood, on the other hand. By and by he was lost again in the crooked ravine where the Nibthwaite Mills now stand, where the water narrowed to half its former breadth, and slid over ranks of rock, sloping downwards like carven tables, or a giant’s stairway, sunken and aslew. But at the head of every force, there were the great fells again in sight, and every time nearer and clearer, grander and more wonderful. At last he came to a sweet round tarn. It was bedded in the woods, and the likeness of every several branch lay upon the water. Thorstein shouted: but then he stayed. Was this the mere he had come so far to seek? and no more than this?

He pressed forward, round the miry edges of the tarn, and stumbled through the narrows of Arklid. Hitherto the stream had been ever narrower, and, but for a few ledges and flats, ever steeper: but here it suddenly became both still and deep, and opened out into breadth. Thorstein’s heart beat hard when the wood thinned, and the waterway broadened, and the world grew brighter, and lo, beyond, a great gleam of blue, and a blaze of golden sky.

Close beside him, seal-bushes fringed the shilloe beds, bulrushes stood in their ranks right out into the shallows, and purple flags and white and yellow water-lilies lay along the edges of the lake. On either hand, seaming the deep forest that clothed the sides of the valley, sharp craggy spurs came down, as it were gateposts to the hall of hills; and broke at their bases into long nabs, rounded here and rocky there, running far out into the mere and tufted to the water-edge with dark oaks and dark firs. And between, there were blue nooks of ripple reflecting the evening sky, and the wild ducks and teal swam through the ripple, and the gulls floated above it: and in lound spots a hundred rings showed how the fish were rising.

Thorstein climbed a howe on the left: and as he climbed, the lake opened up before him. Beyond the nearer woods there was the deep of blue, and the lonely island in the midst of it: and from his feet, away into the uttermost distance, the huge fells, tossing like the breakers on a stormy beach, and rolling away and afar like the heaving waves of the sea. And over them late sunset brooded in the North, with bars of level cloud, purple and gold, and fading rose-flecks overhead.

Unwearied in his exultation, the lad ran down to the shore again, and stripping off hood and kirtle, hose and shoes, all stained and ragged with scrambling through brake and briar, he waded out into deep water, plunged beneath, and swam sturdily through the calmness. Then he flagged at last, and crept ashore, and donned his clothes, and looked about him for a safe night-lair; smiling as he thought of Hundi’s horror at sleeping like a squirrel. He crept into the boughs of a great spreading oak, and its thick leaves sheltered him like a thatched roof and hid him like the hangings of a shut-bed. The level clouds drew together; the purple colour darkened into black; and a line of dusky light alone lingered in the North over Helvellyn, while he slept, dreamless.