Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/284

 Watterson's Creek, flying its skull and crossbones in the very face of the solemn old town of Chamboro, you would have pooh-poohed the idea, and even inwardly chortled a bit, for if ever there was a sober and staid and sleepily respectable old town it was Chamboro. And if ever there was a quiet and slumberous and unromantic stretch of water it was this same Watterson's Creek.

For some twenty circuitous miles it wound sleepily down through gardens and orchards and farm-lands, to join the even sleepier river, on which rafts of logs and strings of honest and hardworking scows, and even a bustling steamer or two, decorously came and went,—"An' not one o' them carryin' so much as a boardin'-net!" Piggie Brennan had exultingly noted. During midsummer the waters of the river were the alluring yellow of sweet stagnation, except, of course, at the bend just below the slaughter-house, where the upper town swimming-hole was. Here they were of a somewhat darker hue; but bless you, water is water the world over! And at one side of this swimming-hole there was a big old wide-rooted buttonwood, which was just the