the flaming flower of humanity, enabled Dorothy to see right down into its fire-heart, and distinguish there the loveliest hues and shades.  Where the struggle for own life is in abeyance, and the struggle for other life active, there the heart that God thought out and means to perfect, the pure love-heart of His humans, reveals itself truly, and is gracious to behold.  For then the will of the individual sides divinely with his divine impulse, and his heart is unified in good.  When the will of the man sides perfectly with the holy impulses in him, then all is well; for then his mind is one with the mind of his Maker; God and man are one.

Amanda shrieked with delight when she was carried to the boat, and went on shrieking as she floated over flower-beds and box-borders, caught now and then in bushes and overhanging branches.  But the great fierce current, ridging the middle of the brown lake as it followed the tide out to the ocean, frightened her a little.  The features of the flat country were all but obliterated; trees only and houses and corn-stacks stood out of the water, while in the direction of the sea where were only meadows, all indication of land had vanished; one wide, brown level was everywhere, with a great rushing serpent of water in the middle of it.  Amanda clapped her little hands in ecstasy.  Never was there such a child for exuberance of joy! her aunt thought.  Or, if there were others as glad, where were any who let the light of their gladness so shine before men, invading, conquering them as she did with the rush of her joy!  Dorothy held fast to the skirt of her frock, fearing every instant the explosive creature would jump overboard in elemental sympathy.  But, poled carefully along by Mr. Drake, they reached in safety a certain old shed, and getting in at the door of the loft where a cow-keeper stored his hay and straw, through that descended into the heart of the Pottery, which its owner was delighted to find—­not indeed dry under foot with such a rain falling, but free from lateral invasion.

His satisfaction, however, was of short duration.  Dorothy went into one of the nearer dwellings, and he was crossing an open space with Amanda, to get help from a certain cottage in unloading the boat and distributing its cargo, when he caught sight of a bubbling pool in the middle of it.  Alas! it was from a drain, whose covering had burst with the pressure from within.  He shouted for help.  Out hurried men, women and children on all sides.  For a few moments he was entirely occupied in giving orders, and let Amanda’s hand go:  every body knew her, and there seemed no worse mischief within reach for her than dabbling in the pools, to which she was still devoted.