and bordering orchards and grain-fields. Now the willows begin to
mark its course, then elms and oaks and walnuts with little thickets
of panicled dogwood and wild plum, where the wild grape and the
bittersweet display their fruit and the wild duck sometimes makes her
nest.

[Illustration: "PAUSING IN EACH DEEP POOL TO COOL AND REFRESH ITSELF"
(p. 109)]

Sometimes the creek almost sinks from sight in a bed of hot sand; it
leaves only a narrow runlet of water idling along the foot of the high
bank and pausing in each deep pool at the feet of the overhanging
trees to cool and refresh itself for its onward journey. To these
quiet pools goes the fisherman with his minnow seine and a stick. He
knows that in the water among the roots of the old tree lie shiners
and soap minnows, creek chubs and soft-shelled "crawdads," the kind
that make good bait for the black bass down in the river. He pokes
around vigorously with his stick and sends them scurrying into his
short seine. Hither also go the school-boy fishermen, with a willow
pole and one gallus apiece, seeking to entice the patriarchal chub,
the shiner and the stone-roller. From this point down, the young
anglers are strung along the banks. Some try their luck for sunfish
by the piles of loose rock and boulders, and some would tempt the
bullheads from siestas in the mud.

Above the mill-dam the water backs up to form a peaceful pond which
mirrors the trees and the rushes and cat-tails above it and sleeps
beneath the thicket of willows where the redwings flock in the
evenings. Broad leaves of the arrow-head and pickerel-weed give
shelter to the coot, bobbing her head and neck as she makes nervous