"I ask you to imagine this high bank crowned with trees ... and the pleasant fields behind it bounded by the murmuring Ripple. Just where this line of bank sloped down again to the level, a by-road turned off and led to the other side of the rise, where it was broken into very capricious hollows ... In her childish days Maggie held this place, called the Red Deeps, in very great awe, and needed all her confidence in Tom's bravery to reconcile her to an excursion thither, visions of robbers and fierce animals haunting every hollow."

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