cut a channel through the meadow, in which the
water could flow back to the creek again below the fall. I think it
could be done," said Mr. Davy, after a pause, "only there would be a
great deal of work necessary, and we could hardly afford to hire it
done."

"O, father, _we_ can do the digging," shouted five voices in chorus;
"we can do it with our spades and wheelbarrows. School doesn't begin
for a month yet, and we can get it all done in that time."

"Hurrah for a fish-pond!" cried Percy, and in imagination he fairly
felt the bites of the three-pound trout he was to catch before summer
was over.

Mr. Davy is a practical farmer. By that I mean that he cultivates the
land with his own hands. He, with his men, and those of the boys who
are old enough, are in the fields every morning in summer by five
o'clock, ploughing, planting, sowing, or milking the cows, and, later
in the season, haying, harvesting, or threshing. Tommy, the eldest of
his sons, is thirteen years old; Clarence, the youngest, is five.

Mr. Davy had been thinking of the fishing-pond for some time, and had
matured the plan in his mind before speaking of it to the boys. The
morning after the conversation of which I have told you, I saw the
five boys standing in thoughtful silence upon the bank above the
hollow in the pasture. I do not believe the engineer who is planning
the bridge across the British Channel, to connect England and France,
feels anymore responsibility than did the Davy boys that morning.

"May we begin to-day, father?" said they, eagerly, at breakfast-time.

"Yes; and Patrick can help you," was the reply.

The horses were harnessed to the plough, and driven to the hollow.
Patrick was instructed how to proceed. He put the reins round his
neck, and took firm hold of the handles. "Go on wid ye, now!" he cried
to the horses. A furrow was soon turned, and the fish-pond fairly
begun.

"Your work," said Mr. Davy to the boys, "will be to wheel away the
earth which Patrick ploughs out. The first thing is to lay a plank
for your wheelbarrows to run upon."

Tommy and George soon brought the planks from the tool-house. Blocks
were laid the proper distance apart to sustain them, and, after two or
three hours' work, a line of plank, which looked to the boys as grand
as the new Pacific Railway, stretched across the hollow. The little
laborers went in to dinner flushed with excitement and hard work, but
as happy, I dare say, as if they had bee