It would not do to say that the boy and the brook were inseparable companions, for there were long months when the Frost King had everything his own way and the merry stream found it hard work to maintain its appearance even on the shallow riffles. Then there were swift flights down the hillsides for the boy, and long journeys up again dragging his sled. Often in the long winter nights he heard the half-smothered gurgle of the near-by brook, and wondered where the trout lived when the thermometer was below zero. Even in the summer days the two friends could not be together all the time. A mile or so over the hill was the brown school-house to which the boy must make his pilgrimages five days each week for three months at a time, and where he learned, helped by the pictures, that three cherries and two cherries make five cherries, and wrestled more or less successfully with the multiplication table. The old meadow just above the orchard was a famous place for strawberries, and many hours the boy spent in gathering the luscious fruit while the bobolinks, perched on swaying mullein stalks or the old rail-fence, engaged in a vocal contest of riotous and maudlin song. Then a robin had built its nest on one of the big beams under the meetinghouse shed on the top of the hill, and the eggs must needs be watched and the young birds looked after. Sometimes the children strayed into the burial ground adjoining the church and pushed aside the myrtle to read on the little head-stone the name of a child that had died long, long ago. If anything could make the boy forget the brook it was his dog. Very likely the dog had a pedigree, but it had not been recorded, and he was as dear to the heart of the child as if his ancestors had all been decorated with blue ribbons. Pedro and the lad knew where the woodchucks lived on the side of the hill above the pond, and it was a red-letter day when one of them was cut off from his hole by the two hunters and Pedro vanquished him in a pitched battle. The brook has run through the years and its laughter sounds now in the ears of the writer. Somehow he hopes that the River of Life will be like the brook, larger grown. And ever as its murmur is heard a vision of the mother is seen. The two grew into the boy’s heart together. In the last days when that mother had grown weary and was waiting for rest, the son sat by her bedside and they talked together of the long past days, of the home under the hill, of friends gone on into the silence, and of the brook with its sun-painted trout. She has been sleeping for many years on the banks of the Susquehanna, lulled by the ceaseless flow of the noble river with whose waters the waters of the brook are mingled. [Illustration: 0033] [Illustration: 0034]