"Ah," he answered, "I fished this brook forty-five years ago.  It
was in the Paradise Valley that I first thought of Rip Van Winkle.
I wanted to come back again for the sake of old times."

But what has all this to do with an open fire?  I will tell you.  It
is at the places along the stream, where the little flames of love
and friendship have been kindled in bygone days, that the past
returns most vividly.  These are the altars of remembrance.

It is strange how long a small fire will leave its mark.  The
charred sticks, the black coals, do not decay easily.  If they lie
well up the hank, out of reach of the spring floods, they will stay
there for years.  If you have chanced to build a rough fireplace of
stones from the brook, it seems almost as if it would last forever.

There is a mossy knoll beneath a great butternut-tree on the
Swiftwater where such a fireplace was built four years ago; and
whenever I come to that place now I lay the rod aside, and sit down
for a little while by the fast-flowing water, and remember.

This is what I see: A man wading up the stream, with a creel over
his shoulder, and perhaps a dozen trout in it; two little lads in
gray corduroys running down the path through the woods to meet him,
one carrying a frying-pan and a kettle, the other with a basket of
lunch on his arm.  Then I see the bright flames leaping up in the
fireplace, and hear the trout sizzling in the pan, and smell the
appetizing odour.  Now I see the lads coming back across the foot-
bridge that spans the stream, with a bottle of milk from the nearest
farmhouse.  They are laughing and teetering as they balance along
the single plank.  Now the table is spread on the moss.  How good
the lunch tastes!  Never were there such pink-fleshed trout, such
crisp and savoury slices of broiled bacon.  Douglas, (the beloved
doll that the younger lad shamefacedly brings out from the pocket of
his jacket,) must certainly have some of it.  And after the lunch is
finished, and the bird's portion has been scattered on the moss, we
creep carefully on our hands and knees to the edge of the brook, and
look over the bank at the big trout that is poising himself in the
amber water.  We have tried a dozen times to catch him, but never
succeeded.  The next time, perhaps--

Well, the fireplace is still standing.  The butternut-tree spreads
its broad branches above the stream.  The violets and the bishop's-
caps and the wild anemones are sprinkled over the banks.  The
yellow-throat and the water-thrush and the vireos still sing the
same tunes in the thicket.  And the elder of the two lads often
comes back with me to that pleasant place and shares my fisherman's
luck beside the Swiftwater.

But the younger lad?

Ah, my little Barney, you have gone to follow a new stream,--clear
as crystal,--flowing through fields of wonderful flowers that never
fade.  It is a strange river to Teddy and me; strange and very far
away.  Some day we shall see it with you; and you will teach us the
names of those blossoms that do not wither.  But till then, little
Barney, the other lad and I will follow the old stream that flows by
the woodland fireplace,--your altar.

Rue grows here.  Yes, there is plenty of rue.  But there is also
rosemary, that 's for remembrance!  And close beside it I see a
little heart's-ease.