Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty yards , as steep as the house-roof , where he had to slide down on his dear little tail . Then another step of stone , ten feet high ; and there he had to stop himself , and crawl along the edge to find a crack ; for if he had rolled over , he would have rolled right into the old woman 's garden , and frightened her out of her wits . Then , when he had found a dark narrow crack , full of green-stalked fern , such as hangs in the basket in the drawing-room , and had crawled down through it , with knees and elbows , as he would down a chimney , there was another grass slope , and another step , and so on , till -- oh , dear me ! I wish it was all over ; and so did he . And yet he thought he could throw a stone into the old woman 's garden . At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs ; white-beam with its great silver-backed leaves , and mountain-ash , and oak ; and below them cliff and crag , cliff and crag , with great beds of crown-ferns and wood-sedge ; while through the shrubs he could see the stream sparkling , and hear it murmur on the white pebbles . He did not know that it was three hundred feet below . You would have been giddy , perhaps , at looking down : but Tom was not . He was a brave little chimney-sweep ; and when he found himself on the top of a high cliff , instead of sitting down and crying for his baba -LRB- though he never had had any baba to cry for -RRB- , he said , `` Ah , this will just suit me ! '' though he was very tired ; and down he went , by stock and stone , sedge and ledge , bush and rush , as if he had been born a jolly little black ape , with four hands instead of two . And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman coming down behind him . But he was getting terribly tired now . The burning sun on the fells had sucked him up ; but the damp heat of the woody crag sucked him up still more ; and the perspiration ran out of the ends of his fingers and toes , and washed him cleaner than he had been for a whole year . But , of course , he dirtied everything , terribly as he went . There has been a great black smudge all down the crag ever since . And there have been more black beetles in Vendale since than ever were known before ; all , of course , owing to Tom 's having blacked the original papa of them all , just as he was setting off to be married , with a sky-blue coat and scarlet leggins , as smart as a gardener 's dog with a polyanthus in his mouth . At last he got to the bottom . But , behold , it was not the bottom -- as people usually find when they are coming down a mountain . For at the foot of the crag were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of every size from that of your head to that of a stage-waggon , with holes between them full of sweet heath-fern ; and before Tom got through them , he was out in the bright sunshine again ; and then he felt , once for all and suddenly , as people generally do , that he was b-e-a-t , beat . You must expect to be beat a few times in your life , little man , if you live such a life as a man ought to live , let you be as strong and healthy as you may : and when you are , you will find it a very ugly feeling .
I hope that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by you who is not beat ; for , if you have not , you had best lie where you are , and wait XXXXX better times , as poor Tom did .
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