OTHER WATER BORDERS 



and all the water turned into Diedrick's 

 ditch ; there she sat knitting through the 

 long sun, and the children brought out her 

 dinner. It was all up with Amos ; he was 

 too much of a gentleman to fight a lady 

 that was the way he expressed it. She was 

 a very large lady, and a long-handled shovel 

 is no mean weapon. The next year Judson 

 and Diedrick put in a modern water gauge 

 and took the summer ebb in equal inches. 

 Some of the water-right difficulties are 

 more squalid than this, some more tragic ; 

 but unless you have known them you can- 

 not very well know what the water thinks 

 as it slips past' the gardens and in the long 

 slow sweeps of the canal. You get that 

 sense of brooding from the confined and 

 sober floods, not all at once but by de- 

 grees, as one might become aware of a mid- 

 dle-aged and serious neighbor who has had 

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