His mother was pleased with this thought of Peter's for the poor old man, and at once brought a basket and filled it with cakes for him to carry to the invalid, while Peter's father was making him promise not to stay out too late, and soon the boy was on his way to his friends, happy in the beauty of the day, and in the thought of the pleasure his present would give the blind man. And he was not mistaken, the old man was delighted with the cakes, and at once broke and ate one, while he began to tell Peter one of the stories for which he was famous, and which he knew Peter loved to hear. But Peter suddenly remembered his promise not to stay out late, and finally became so uneasy that he told the old man he must not wait to hear the end of the story, and, hastily bidding him farewell, started towards home. His path lay beside the dyke, and along its grassy banks grew beautiful wild flowers of many varieties, so numerous and attractive that Peter decided to pick a bunch of them to carry home to his mother, who was so much of an invalid that she was seldom out of the house. So he picked a few here and a few there--blue and yellow and pink, until he had a handful of those varieties of which he knew his mother was most fond, and as he walked on, to keep himself from feeling lonesome, he hummed a gay little song. Presently, he stopped, and neither sang nor smiled, as he looked at a slender thread of water trickling through the grass. Where did it come from? Surely not from the canal, and there was nowhere else for it to come from unless it came from the dyke itself. The thought was enough to make even a child turn pale and tremble. Only the dykes stood between the boundless sea and the safety of little Holland. He looked again, and to his imagination, the stream seemed greater already. What could he do? Night was coming on, the road was a solitary one. There was only the barest chance of anyone passing that way whom he might hail, or of whom he could ask advice. Then came a quick recollection of his promise to his father, and he started homeward again, but a force as mighty as a giant's grasp, made him turn back again to watch that trickling stream of water. He was near one of the great oaken sluices, and bounding up beside it he carefully examined the dyke. There, as small as his finger, was a hole--strange and unaccountable happening,--and through that little hole was flowing the stream of water at his feet. Like lightning the flash of intuition came to Peter, if that hole were not stopped up instantly, the force of the flow through it would rapidly increase from the pounding of that mighty sea behind it. In a night the flood would break through the dyke and perhaps destroy all the homes in Holland.