of the old man's stories; but, as soon as
he had seen him eat one muffin, took leave of him to return home.

As he went along by the canals, then quite full,--for it was in
October, and the autumn rains had swelled the waters,--the boy now
stopped to pull the little blue flowers which his mother loved so
well; now, in childish gayety, hummed some merry song. The road
gradually became more solitary; and soon neither the joyous shout of
the villager, returning to his cottage-home, nor the rough voice of
the carter, grumbling at his lazy horses, was any longer to be heard.
The little fellow now perceived that the blue of the flowers in his
hand was scarcely distinguishable from the green of the surrounding
herbage, and he looked up in some dismay. The night was falling; not,
however, a dark winter night, but one of those beautiful, clear,
moonlight nights, in which every object is perceptible, though not as
distinctly as by day. The child thought of his father, of his
injunction, and was preparing to quit the ravine in which he was
almost buried, and to regain the beach, when suddenly a slight noise,
like the trickling of water upon pebbles, attracted his attention. He
was near one of the large sluices, and he now carefully examines it,
and soon discovers a hole in the wood, through which the water was
flowing. With the instant perception which every child in Holland
would have, the boy saw that the water must soon enlarge the hole
through which it was now only dropping, and that utter and general
ruin would be the consequence of the inundation of the country that
must follow. To see, to throw away the flowers, to climb from stone to
stone till he reached the hole, and to put his finger into it, was the
work of a moment; and, to his delight, he finds that he has succeeded
in stopping the flow of the water.

This was all very well for a little while, and the child thought only
of the success of his device. But the night was closing in, and with
the night came the cold. The little boy looked around in vain. No one
came. He shouted--he called loudly--no one answered. He resolved to
stay there all night; but, alas! the cold was becoming every moment
more biting, and the poor finger fixed in the hole began to feel
benumbed, and the numbness soon extended to the hand, and thence
throughout the whole arm. The pain became still greater, still harder
to bear; but still the boy moved not. Tears rolled down his cheeks as
he thought