“But a brook ain’t got no mouth.”
“Yes; but he put himself in place of the brook. He just imagined what the brook would say, if it could talk. Listen once more.” And for the third time and still more melodramatically Clarence gave voice to the quatrain.
“Tennysee was a fool. The idea of a feller taking himself to be a brook. Why, if he was a brook, he couldn’t talk anyhow.”
“Abe, you’re hopeless.”
“See here, don’t you call me no names.”
“You’re a literalist!”
“You’re another, and you’re a liar!”
“Oh!” cried Clarence, gurgling with delight, “here are the Pictured Rocks, sure enough. And a cave!”
Beside the stream, a vast bed of rocks in veritable war-paint, hollowed at the centre into a rather large cavern, greeted the eyes of the astonished youth. The colors in horizontal layers were gay and well-defined, red being predominant.
“This is where the Injuns used to come for their paint,” explained Abe, forgetting his grievance in the pleasure of being a cicerone. “They used to come down this path and daub themselves up, and then cross the river to Wisconsin, and shoot the Injuns on the other side with their bows and arrers.”