The Stream in Spate The stream was in spate that
runs through the gully in the glen. Now the place is quiet once more. The hard, unmuffled noise of the flood has died. The water was brown and now it is clear, and it is hard to believe that flood passes so quickly. In the fields there is still much water that the land does not want. It filters slowly through the drains, and only when it is gone will the soil be fit to take the tractor and the implements of cultivation. No one looks at the same river twice. The truth of this is more apparent when one thinks of the stream as it was a week back. Now a stranded clump of grass oscillates in the feeble current, but then every piece of debris from the uplands was churned and turned on its way to the sea. A mile below us the stream runs into the tide. It no longer colours the salt water for a dozen yards. The two blend as they meet, and the flecks of dead leaves and grass vanish at once where the gulls are riding with a sharp watch for morsels of food.
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