er is for
doing.

So they brought their possessions, and they built a house by the water
border and planted trees. One of the men was all for an orchard but the
other preferred vegetables. So they did each what he liked, and were
never so happy as when walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
touching the growing things as they walked, and praising each other's
work.

They were very happy for three years. By this time the stream had become
so interested it had almost forgotten about running away. But every year
it noted that a larger bit of the meadow was turned under and planted,
and more and more the men made dams and ditches by which to turn the
water into their gardens.

"In fact," said the stream, "I am being made into an irrigating ditch
before I have had my fling in the world. I really must make a start."

That very winter, by the help of a great storm, the stream went roaring
down the meadow, over the mesa, and so clean away, with only a track of
muddy sand to show the way it had gone.

All that winter the two men brought water for drinking from a spring,
and looked for the stream to come back. In the spring they hoped still,
for that was the season they looked for the orchard to bear. But no
fruit grew on the trees, and the seeds they planted shriveled in the
earth. So by the end of summer, when they understood that the water
would not come back at all, they went sadly away.

Now the Creek of Pinon Pines did not have a happy time. It went out in
the world on the wings of the storm, and was very much tossed about and
mixed up with other waters, lost and bewildered.

Everywhere it saw water at work, turning mills, watering fields,
carrying trade, falling as hail, rain, and snow; and at the last, after
many journeys it found itself creeping out from under the rocks of the
same old mountain, in the Canyon of Pinon Pines.

"After all, home is best," said the little stream to itself, and ran
about in its choked channels looking for old friends.

The willows were there, but grown shabby and dying at the top; the
birches were quite dead, and there was only rubbish where the white
clematis had been. Even the rabbits had gone away.

The little stream ran whimpering in the meadow, fumbling at the ruined
ditches to comfort the fruit trees which were not quite dead. It was
very dull in those days living in the Canyon of Pinon Pines.

"But it is really my own fault," said the stream. So it went on
repairin