REDPAD THE FOX 5 
leading off the water by a sluice into a new channel. 
But the farm had fallen on evil days at the hands 
of Paddy Magragh, and the reservoir was choked 
with cresses and duckweed. Much rain had fallen 
this spring, and the basin was dangerously full. 
The sluice was shut fast, but the brown water 
squirted through the chinks and danced down the 
hill. The stream, all wild with joy of the great 
rains, brought down leaves and twigs in its rush, 
and waltzed them round and round in the plaited 
current until it heaped them against the ever-grow- 
ing scum and debris at the sluice. By and by 
the branch of a tree came rolling along, and stuck 
fast. The leaves were driven against it until a 
high barricade was raised, and the water could 
only trickle through the sluice. Then Vix went 
home to her cubs, but the stream still poured into 
the basin from which it could find no outlet. There 
was only one flaw in the cement, and that quite a 
little one, patched with clay and willow withies, 
but the water the brown, treacherous water 
found it out, and worked silently and steadily all 
night. O a mad, merry miner is the water ! 
Hard after the ' rail ' came the wind and the 
rain. Safe and warm below ground, the foxes heard 
the howling of the gale in the Plantation, and the 
steady splash of rain drops on the sodden ground ; 
