THR BROOK SHOAL. 
139 
The Brook Shoal. 
BY DOROTHY MAY. 
A little brook murmured lazily through the woods where 
the yellow and white violets bloomed in the early spring 
sunshine, and later the ghost flowers gleamed through the 
ferns, and the heavenly song of the veery floated down 
from the heart of the tall hemlocks. Coming out into the 
sunshine, its waylay down a rocky steep, where it plunged 
and boiled and swirled in miniature cataracts and rapids, 
until, reaching the lower levels, it ran, deep and foam- 
flecked, by the garden, and then spread itself over a large 
shoal. 
In the house beyond the garden lived a child who had 
no other playmates than the brook and the wild life in and 
about it. She danced np and down the banks to the wild 
music of the stream. She laughed and sang with the 
brave chickadees and the blue jays in winter, and in sum¬ 
mer joyed in all the tuneful things that haunted its shores. 
But most she loved the shoal, for there, curled up and hid¬ 
den in the tall grass, she could watch for hours the ever- 
changing life. 
Here came the eave swallows by dozens for mud to build 
their adobe houses under the eaves of the neighbor’s old 
barn across'the road, and she need only turn her head to 
see the little masons working up in Swallow Row. And 
when the cozy homes were finished, and these birds of the 
sky, in whom the'maternal instinct had conquered all else, 
folded their long wings to sit patient day after day, what 
chatter floated down ! How a choice bit of gossip, started 
by Mrs. S. of No. 1, twittered down the Row! How they 
wondered that any bird could live without society ! Now, 
there were their cousins, the bank swallows, a great colo- 
