the usual way, and life must have gone on as before. No doubt the man
did not realize the torture he put them to; but it was a cruel thing;
and I never have any patience with people who exaggerate a child's
offence to it, and make it feel itself a wicked criminal for some little
act of scarcely any consequence. If we elders stand here in the place of
the Heavenly Father towards those younger children of His, He will not
hold us guiltless when we obscure for them the important difference
between a great and a small misdeed, or wring their souls, fear-clouded
as they always are, with a sense of perdition for no real sin.

[Illustration: THE SIX-MILE LEVEL.]

[Illustration: "HE TOLD THEM THAT HE HAD GOT THEM NOW."]

V.

THE HYDRAULIC AND ITS RESERVOIRS.--OLD RIVER.

THERE were two branches of the Hydraulic: one followed the course of the
Miami, from some unknown point to the northward, on the level of its
high bank, and joined the other where it emptied into the river just
above the bridge. This last came down what had been a street, and it
must have been very pretty to have these two swift streams of clear
water rushing through the little town, under the culverts, and between
the stone walls of its banks. But what a boy mainly cares for in a thing
is _use_, and the boys tried to make some use of the Hydraulic, since it
was there to find what they could do with it. Of course they were aware
of the mills dotted along its course, and they knew that it ran them;
but I do not believe any of them thought that it was built merely to run
flour-mills and saw-mills and cotton-mills. They did what they could to
find out its real use, but they could make very little of it. The
current was so rapid that it would not freeze in winter, and in summer
they could not go in swimming in it by day, because it was so public,
and at night the Basin had more attractions. There was danger of cutting
your feet on the broken glass and crockery which people threw into the
Hydraulic, and though the edges of the culverts were good for jumping
off of, the boys did not find them of much practical value. Sometimes
you could catch sunfish in the Hydraulic, but it was generally too
swift, and the only thing you could depend upon was catching crawfish.
These abounded so that if you dropped a string with a bit of meat on it
into the water anywhere, you could pull it up again with two or three
crawfish hanging to it. The boys could not begin to u