ran down on its way from the hills?

To the young man sitting now on its bank amidst the bulrushes it was
as living as himself, his playmate, friend, and master, all in one.
First of all things which he could remember were the brightness and
the coolness of it as it had laved his limbs in his childhood on
mid-summer noons, his mother's hands holding him safely as he waded
with rosy feet and uncertain steps along its pebbly bottom! How many
mornings, when he had grown to boyhood and to manhood, had he escaped
from the rays of the vertical sun into its acacia-shadowed pools; how
many moonlit, balmy nights had he bathed in its still reaches, the
liquid silver of its surface breaking up like molten metal as he
dived! How many hours of peace had he passed, as he was spending
this, waiting for the fish to float into his great net, whilst the
air and the water were alike so still that he could hear the little
voles stealing in and out amongst the reeds, and the water-thrush
pushing the pebbles on its sands in search for insects, though beast
and bird were both unseen by him! How many a time upon the dawn of a
holy-day had he washed and swam in its waters whilst the bells of the
old church in the village above had tolled in the softness of dusk!

He thought of none of these memories distinctly, for he was young and
contented, and those who are satisfied with their lot live in their
present; but they all drifted vaguely through his mind as he sat by
the side of the river, as the memories of friends dear from infancy
drift through our waking dreams.

He was in every way a son of the Edera, for he had been born almost
in the water itself; his mother had been washing linen with other
women at the ford when she had been taken with the pains of labour