To-day as we plunged into the shadow of the woods along the side of the Backwater, it held no more water than a burn in the summer heats--little and still clear, the minnows and troutlets balancing and darting, joggling each other rudely from beneath favourite stones, or shouldering into well-situated holes in the bank, like people scrambling for seats at a play. Then a few yards farther on would come a deep brown pool with a curious greenish opal sheen lying like a scum on the surface, for all the world like two-coloured silk. This was the reflection of the leaves above. Very dense they were, so that the light could hardly filter through between. Along the burnside it was generally lighter. But the trees clustered deep and thick about the pools, as I suppose they do all the world over, whenever they get the chance. "The water is lower than I have ever seen it!" I said, as it might be, just for something to say. But Mr. Ablethorpe did not answer a word. I could see him looking eagerly about him, evidently searching for something he had seen before, but for the moment could not find again. I could not for the life of me imagine what it could be, nor yet why he had been so keen to have me with him. It was not that he was afraid. That was plain enough. For he had been this way before, and that quite recently. I knew by his spying this way and that for landmarks. And I knew quite certain that it was not just that I might give him a hand with old Caleb Fergusson's harvest that he had asked me off from my home work, or home play, whichever it might be. All at once he stopped, sat down on a log, pulled out his knife and began to whittle at a branch of oak. Whatever it was he was looking for, he had either found it, or decided to give up the search. We were sitting on a fallen tree trunk, close to the edge of the Backwater, and the pool beneath us was almost dry. The Lane ran out of sight, getting smaller and smaller in what I have heard called "perspective"--that is, straight as if ruled on paper with a straight edge. Then the Hayfork Minister asked me if I saw anything particular about the water. I told him what I have just written, but I could not for the life of me remember the word "perspective." He understood all right, though. "Good," he said, "and does that suggest nothing else to the bold and inquiring mind of my friend Joseph?" After looking awhile I answered that it seemed to me as if somebody had cut the canal with spades just as Tim O'Hara and Mike Whelan did the ditching and draining on my father's forage parks the winter before last. "Right again, Joe!" he said, pleasedlike, and rumpled up my hair in a way I don't let anybody do--except Elsie, who does as she likes, whether I like it or no. I pulled away my head angrily. But the Hayfork Minister never minded.