xt
fortnight Willie discovered that as often as the stream ran through the
garden, the little brook in which he had set his water-wheel going was
nearly dry.

He had soon made a nice little channel for it, so that it should not get
into any of the beds. He laid down turf along its banks in some parts,
and sowed grass and daisy-seed in others; and when he found a pretty
stone or shell, or bit of coloured glass or bright crockery or broken
mirror, he would always throw it in, that the water might have the
prettier path to run upon. Indeed, he emptied his store of marbles into
it. He was not particularly fond of playing with marbles, but he had a
great fancy for those of real white marble with lovely red streaks, and
had collected some twenty or thirty of them. He kept them in the brook
now, instead of in a calico bag.

The summer was a very hot and dry one. More than any of the rest of the
gardens in the village, that of The Ruins suffered from such weather;
for not only was there a deep gravel-bed under its mould, but a good
part of its produce grew on the mounds, which were mostly heaps of
stones, and neither gravel nor stones could retain much moisture. Willie
watered it a good deal out of the Prior's Well; but it was hard work,
and did not seem to be of much use.

One evening, when he had set the little brook free to run through the
garden, and the sun was setting huge and red, with the promise of
another glowing day to-morrow, and the air was stifling, and not a
breath of wind stirring, so that the flowers hung their heads oppressed,
and the leaves and little buttons of fruit on the trees looked ready to
shrivel up and drop from the boughs, the thought came to him whether he
could not turn the brook into a little Nile, causing it to overflow its
banks and enrich the garden. He could not, of course, bring it about in
the same way; for the Nile overflows from the quantities of rain up in
the far-off mountains, making huge torrents rush into it faster than its
channel, through a slow, level country, can carry the water away, so
that there is nothing for it but overflow. If, however, he could not
make more water run out of the well, he could make it more difficult
for what did come from it to get away. First, he stopped up the outlet
through the hedge with stones, and clay, and bits of board; then watched
as it spread, until he saw where it would try to escape next, and did
the same; and so on, taking care especially