ange to say, has not been preserved.
He was only a little fellow eight years old, but like every child in
that country, he knew of the danger in which he lived, and how at any
time if he should see any sign of water coming in through an
embankment, or a sluice-gate, where it ought not, it was his bounden
duty immediately to give the alarm. One day he asked his father's
permission to go to a village not far off to carry a little present
to a blind man who lived there, and who had often talked very kindly
to him. He did not stay long at the village, for his father had
bidden him to hurry home, but being only a very little boy he walked
on and on, thinking of the words the blind man had spoken to him, and
of a hundred other things, and paying very little heed to the way in
which he was going. After a long time he found that he had taken a
wrong road, and was in a desolate part of the country close up by the
dykes. It was in the month of October, and night was just coming on,
so he climbed up the embankment to try and see the nearest way he
could take to reach his home. As he was descending he passed by one
of the great flood-gates of the dyke. Pausing for just a moment
before making a scamper off towards home, he heard a sound which
filled him with dismay--it was the sound of water falling and
trickling over stones. He knew it was his duty to find out where it
was, and very soon he saw a hole in the wood-work through which the
water was coming pretty freely. Examining it more carefully he saw
that the pressure was threatening to open up a wide crack in the
gate; and, child as he was, he knew that if it were not stopped that
little stream would soon become a cascade, a great sheet of water, a
torrent, and then a terrible inundation which would end in desolation
and death. So the little fellow did not hesitate. He determined to
try and prevent the mischief. Reaching up to the hole he placed his
finger in it, but soon he found that the wood was rotten, and that
the small hole would soon become larger. So he took off his jacket
and, tearing off a sleeve, he inserted part of this in the hole, and
for a time it resisted the water. But not for long. He found that the
pressure was not strong and even enough, and that there was nothing
for it but to tear away the edges of the decaying wood and then to
put his arm, encased in the other sleeve of the jacket, into the
hole. To his delight he found that it exactly fitted and effectually