Sucker Days. 79 



and here and there along the stone walls 

 some of the butternuts that a past gener- 

 ation of squirrels hid too well had devel- 

 oped into scrawny trees. Through the 

 leafless bushes of the swamp we could get 

 a glimpse of a little round pond hole out 

 near the middle, and tradition had it that 

 no one had ever found bottom there. 

 That was because no one had ever tried. 

 If any one had ever found bottom there 

 he surely would have told of it ; and so 

 the question remained as settled with us. 

 The swamp was just one of a thousand in 

 New England, but special interest cen- 

 tered in this one because Brown Brook 

 emerged from it, and with its many little 

 swirls and pourings and bubblings among 

 the bogs and rocks finally entered the old 

 mill-pond right where the button bushes 

 grew thickest. 



Brown Brook was not exactly a spring 

 brook, because in the summer-time the 

 water got pretty warm, and sometimes 

 there wasn't very much of it anyway, and 

 that 's why the boy of whom I am going to 

 write never heard from the ten small mot- 



