sh, and with a wrench tore out the worm from his gills, a piece of
which fell on the Brook athwart the shadow of the laugher.

"What a fine one!" said the boy, and started up;--started up to slip
against a smooth worn stone, and fall over the rock into the Brook,
close by the willow stump; the captive fish held tightly as he went, but
slipping from the falling grasp into its welcome element once more.

The Brook had never felt so hard a blow before. The rain and hail were
nothing to this. It made her splash and leap and swell against the rocky
bank, until she could have called with pain.

How still the boy laid on her breast! his head against the willow stump,
over which there trickled a tiny purple stream smaller than the
spring-drops from the rock! How richly his golden locks floated upon the
Brook! but how widely strained his bright blue eyes glaring at the sky
and tree-tops above, and how he gasped from his mouth; a mouth so like
the one the laborer had often prest in harvest-time to the Brook, when
it was yet circling in the meadow! The Brook said to herself, "I will
put some of my ripples into this mouth, as I have seen the laborer do;
perhaps, like him, it will make his eye sparkle, and send him away
again; for he lies heavy on my breast." And so the ripples went into the
opened mouth by dozens; but the blue sky and tree-tops faded from his
eyes, and the lips lost their bright color, and the purple trickling on
the willow stump grew thick and settled into a dark pool.

All night the dead boy lay upon the breast of the Brook; and the fishes
played around him, wondering what it was; and the little insects hopped
over him at early sunlight; until the purple pool dried up, and only
left a stain behind.

And soon the Brook heard the hum of voices sounding over the rocks, as
she listened from her solitude; and soon more shadows fell upon her
face. Then looking up she saw the laborer once again; and the Brook
rejoiced to think perhaps she was going back again into her pleasant
meadow. He had taken up the stick the boy had used; and was looking down
below upon the Brook, as the face--the lovely face, with more of the old
sorrow in it--of the laborer's daughter, raised itself above his
shoulder.

"My brother!--drowned and dead!--and no more to come home alive to share
his sister's home."

This the Brook heard, and the fishes swam away into their holes, as
piercing, sorrowful human tones mingled with the passing bre