"Yes, you said the bowlders were made by ice," answered Susie. "Did the ice make these pebbles?"
"Perhaps so, and perhaps the river made them and left them here."
"What! that river away down there? How could it get up here?"
"That river away down there once flowed right over this ground," said Uncle Robert. "This slope," pointing just above, "was its bank, and the ground under our feet its bed."
"That must have been a hundred years ago," said Donald.
"Yes, a great many hundred years ago. You see the work this bit of a stream has done in the path? Many rivers begin just this way. They are cutting and changing the earth all the time."
They had now come to the spring nearly at the foot of the slope. On sultry summer days it was a cool, inviting spot. The low-spreading branches of a beautiful bur oak shaded the little stream where it gushed from the outcropping limestone.
"Do you want a drink?" asked Susie, taking the tin dipper which always hung by the spring.
"Thank you, dear. How cool it is! It makes me think of the old spring in the hayfield where I used to work when I was a boy."
"The rain has not made the spring run any faster," said Donald.