d always
been, and would always be, a gracious curve in it where a child's head
might lie in comfort. Presently with a shy pressure, Rod whispered:
"Shall I sit in the other room, Waitstill and Ivory?--Am I in the way?"

Ivory looked up from his book quietly shaking his head, while Waitstill
put her arm around the boy and drew him closer.

"Our little brother is never in the way," she said, as she bent and
kissed him.

Men may come and men may go; Saco Water still tumbles tumultuously over
the dam and rushes under the Edgewood bridge on its way to the sea;
and still it listens to the story of to-day that will sometime be the
history of yesterday.

On midsummer evenings the windows of the old farmhouse over at Boyntons'
gleam with unaccustomed lights and voices break the stillness, lessening
the gloom of the long grass-grown lane of Lois Boynton's watching in
days gone by. On sunny mornings there is a merry babel of children's
chatter, mingled with gentle maternal warnings, for this is a new brood
of young things and the river is calling them as it has called all
the others who ever came within the circle of its magic. The fragile
harebells hanging their blue heads from the crevices of the rocks;
the brilliant columbines swaying to and fro on their tall stalks; the
patches of gleaming sand in shallow places beckoning little bare feet
to come and tread them; the glint of silver minnows darting hither
and thither in some still pool; the tempestuous journey of some
weather-beaten log, fighting its way downstream;--here is life in
abundance, luring the child to share its risks and its joys.

When Waitstill's boys and Patty's girls come back to the farm, they play
by Saco Water as their mothers and their fathers did before them. The
paths through the pine woods along the river's brink are trodden smooth
by their restless, wandering feet; their eager, curious eyes search the
waysides for adventure, but their babble and laughter are oftenest heard
from the ruins of an old house hidden by great trees. The stones of
the cellar, all overgrown with blackberry vines, are still there; and
a fragment of the brick chimney, where swallows build their nests from
year to year. A wilderness of weeds, tall and luxuriant, springs up to
hide the stone over which Jacob Cochrane stepped daily when he issued
from his door; and the polished stick with which three-year-old Patty
beats a tattoo may be a round from the very chair in which he