him.

Nearer and nearer drew the whistle. Suddenly it stopped right short off.
Farmer Brown's boy had come in sight of the Smiling Pool or rather, it
was what used to be the Smiling Pool. Now there wasn't any Smiling Pool,
for the very little pool left was too small and sickly-looking to smile.
There were great banks of mud, out of which grew the bulrushes. The
lily-pads were forlornly stretched out towards the tiny pool of water
remaining. Where the banks were steep and high, the holes that Jerry
Muskrat and Billy Mink knew so well were plain to see. Over at one side
stood Jerry Muskrat's house, wholly out of water.

Somehow, it seemed to Farmer Brown's boy that he must be dreaming. He
never, never had seen anything like this before, not even in the very
driest weather of the hottest part of the summer. He looked this way and
looked that way. The Green Meadows looked just as usual. The Green
Forest looked just as usual. The Laughing Brook--ha! What was the matter
with the Laughing Brook? He couldn't hear it and that, you know, was
very unusual. He dropped his rod and ran over to the Laughing Brook.
There wasn't any brook. No, sir, there wasn't any brook; just pools of
water with the tiniest of streams trickling between. Big stones over
which he had always seen the water running in the prettiest of little
white falls were bare and dry. In the little pools frightened minnows
were darting about.

Farmer Brown's boy scratched his head in a puzzled way. "I don't
understand it," said he. "I don't understand it at all. Something must
have gone wrong with the springs that supply the water for the Laughing
Brook. They must have failed. Yes, Sir, that is just what must have
happened. But I never heard of such a thing happening before, and I
really don't see how it could happen." He stared up into the Green
Forest just as if he thought he could see those springs. Of course, he
didn't think anything of the kind. He was just turning it all over in
his mind. "I know what I'll do! I'll go up to those springs this
afternoon and find out what the trouble is," he said out loud. "They are
way over almost on the other side of the Green Forest, and the easiest
way to get there will be to start from home and cut across the Old
Pasture up to the edge of the Mountain behind the Green Forest. If I try
to follow up the Laughing Brook now, it will take too long, because it
winds and twists so. Besides, it is too hard work."

With that, Farme