"MIDST THE LITTLE STREAMS. 
be peer was dead in the Valley of the 
Little Streams, and fallen in her cloak 
of burning sumach, her maples and her dog- 
woods kindling her funeral pyre in flashing 
gold and purple and flame-red about her. 
There was nothing left to live in the Valley 
of the Little Streams, it seemed, till suddenly, 
upreared beneath the frowning pines, erect, 
poised, like some ancient heroic bronze statue 
of a giant, towering and tremendous in 
rugged, rough-carved, uncouth strength—old 
Ephraim. 
No man ever weighed or measured him, but 
well-nigh ten feet long, and in weight about 
a thousand pounds, with claws of six inches 
to argue with, was old Ephraim, the grizzly 
bear, and he made just as much noise as the 
average mouse, or, rather, less. 
Old Ephraim, however, was listening, and 
it must have been to something far away. 
The little streams and the robber-birds he 
had always with him. 
Suddenly the little gray squirrel, who had 
come down to hang from a low bough in 
impossible positions and call old Ephraim 
names, checked and clung, listening. For far, 
