he shadow falls the deepest,
Where the clustering nuts fall free,
That's the way for Billy and me._"--JAMES HOGG.

The spot was a hollow between two grassy meadows, where a brook came
winding with a gentle fall, under coverts of hazel, willow and alder, to
feed the canal. It was a quite diminutive brook, and its inflow, by the
wharf known as Ibbetson's, troubled the stagnant canal water for a very
short distance. But it availed, a mile above, to turn a mill, and--
a marvel in this country of factories--it had escaped pollution.
Below the mill-dam it hurried down a pretty steep declivity, dodging its
channel from side to side, but always undercutting the bank on one side,
while on the other it left miniature creeks or shoals and spits where
the minnows played and the water-flies dried their wings on the warm
pebbles; always, save that twice or thrice before finding its outlet it
paused below one of these pebbly spits to widen and deepen itself into a
pool where it was odds that the sun, slanting through the bushes, showed
a brown trout lurking.

By such a pool--but they had scared away the trout--our two children
were busy. Tilda, her ablutions over, had handed the cake of soap to
Arthur Miles, scrambled out on the deeper side, and ensconced herself in
the fork of an overhanging hazel-mote; where, having reached for a
cluster of nuts and cracked them, she sat and munched, with petticoat
dripping and bare legs dangling over the pool.

"Be sure you don't fergit be'ind the ears," she admonished the boy.
"You may think you're on'y a small boy an' nobody's goin' to search yer
corners; but back at the Good Samaritan there was a tex' nailed up--
_Thou Gawd seest me_; and Sister said 'E was most partic'lar just in the
little places you wouldn't think."

By her orders the boy had stripped off shirt and stockings, and stood
now almost knee-deep in the water, lathering his hair and face and neck
and shoulders with vigour. Tilda observed that his skin was delicately
fair and white. She had never seen a more beautiful boy. But he was
slender, and would need mothering.

"You're comin' to it nicely," she called down to him. "It feels funny
to start with, but in the end you'll a'most get to like it."

"I _do_ like it."

She considered for a while.

"If that's so," she said, "you 'd better strip all over an' 'ave done
with it. I was bringin' you to it gradual."

"But--"

"Oh, _that's_ all right. I knows my manners.