r might float downstream likening himself
to a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his
oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as
it does when a sample of man comes.

Now let not any one suppose that I thought of these things when I was
young, for I knew not the way to do it. And proud enough in truth I
was at the universal fear I spread in all those lonely places, where I
myself must have been afraid, if anything had come up to me. It is
all very pretty to see the trees big with their hopes of another year,
though dumb as yet on the subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety,
and the banks spread out with comfort; but a boy takes none of this to
heart; unless he be meant for a poet (which God can never charge upon
me), and he would liefer have a good apple, or even a bad one, if he
stole it.

When I had travelled two miles or so, conquered now and then with cold,
and coming out to rub my legs into a lively friction, and only fishing
here and there, because of the tumbling water; suddenly, in an open
space, where meadows spread about it, I found a good stream flowing
softly into the body of our brook. And it brought, so far as I could
guess by the sweep of it under my knee-caps, a larger power of clear
water than the Lynn itself had; only it came more quietly down, not
being troubled with stairs and steps, as the fortune of the Lynn is, but
gliding smoothly and forcibly, as if upon some set purpose.

Hereupon I drew up and thought, and reason was much inside me; because
the water was bitter cold, and my little toes were aching. So on the
bank I rubbed them well with a sprout of young sting-nettle, and having
skipped about awhile, was kindly inclined to eat a bit.

Now all the turn of all my life hung upon that moment. But as I sat
there munching a crust of Betty Muxworthy's sweet brown bread, and a bit
of cold bacon along with it, and kicking my little red heels against the
dry loam to keep them warm, I knew no more than fish under the fork what
was going on over me. It seemed a sad business to go back now and tell
Annie there were no loaches; and yet it was a frightful thing, knowing
what I did of it, to venture, where no grown man durst, up the Bagworthy
water. And please to recollect that I was only a boy in those days, fond
enough of anything new, but not like a man to meet it.

However, as I ate more and more, my spirit arose within me, and I
thought of what