Few children had nicer grounds to play in than the Danvers children. The garden was very large, and besides the lawn and the winding walks among the shrubberies, which afforded such capital hiding-places when they played hide-and-seek, there was the large kitchen-garden as well. Beyond the kitchen-garden lay pleasant, sunny fields, at the foot of which flowed a small stream that farther down joined the river in which Jumbo had been so nearly drowned.  On the other side of the stream lay a long slip of land which Mr. Danvers always spoke of as a waste piece of ground, and over which he sometimes threatened to send the plough. But partly because the ground was really too poor to be of much good, and partly because the children begged him to leave it alone, it had never yet been disturbed, and the Wilderness, as they had named it, remained theirs to all intents and purposes.