in the alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet.

An early ablution of his sort was not the custom of the farmers
along the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a
stone's throw from the water, and there was a clear, deep
swimming-hole in the Willow Cove that would have tempted the
busiest man, or the least cleanly, in York County. Then, too,
Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, schooled on its
very brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or beside
it, or at least within sight or sound of it.

The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him,
left him cold in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won
his heart. It was just big enough to love. It was full of
charms and changes, of varying moods and sudden surprises. Its
voice stole in upon his ear with a melody far sweeter and more
subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it was not without
strength, and when it was swollen with the freshets of the spring
and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could dash
and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them.

Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the
sunrise, with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the
sweet loveliness of the summer landscape.

And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song,
creating and nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path.
Cradled in the heart of a great mountain-range, it pursued its
gleaming way, here lying silent in glassy lakes, there rushing
into tinkling little falls, foaming great falls, and thundering