OTHER WATER BORDERS 



'^nd 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 broodino: from the confined and 

 sober floods, not all at once but by de- 

 grees, as one might become aware of a mid- 

 dle-a^ed and serious neio^hbor who has had 



