'Well, ain't we plenty?' Jesse pointed to the ragged perspective ahead of them that plunged downhill into the fog. 'I lay there's a cord an' a half o' firewood, let alone faggots, 'fore we get anywheres anigh the brook.' 'The brook's got up a piece since morning,' said Jabez. 'Sounds like's if she was over Wickenden's door-stones.' Jesse listened, too. There was a growl in the brook's roar as though she worried something hard. 'Yes. She's over Wickenden's door-stones,' he replied. 'Now she'll flood acrost Alder Bay an' that'll ease her.' 'She won't ease Jim Wickenden's hay none if she do,' Jabez grunted. 'I told Jim he'd set that liddle hay-stack o' his too low down in the medder. I _told_ him so when he was drawin' the bottom for it.' 'I told him so, too,' said Jesse. 'I told him 'fore ever you did. I told him when the County Council tarred the roads up along.' He pointed uphill, where unseen automobiles and road-engines droned past continually. 'A tarred road, she shoots every drop o' water into a valley same's a slate roof. 'Tisn't as 'twas in the old days, when the waters soaked in and soaked out in the way o' nature. It rooshes off they tarred roads all of a lump, and naturally every drop is bound to descend into the valley. And there's tar roads both two sides this valley for ten mile. That's what I told Jim Wickenden when they tarred the roads last year. But he's a valley-man. He don't hardly ever journey uphill.' 'What did he say when you told him that?' Jabez demanded, with a little change of voice. 'Why? What did he say to you when _you_ told him?' was the answer. 'What he said to you, I reckon, Jesse.' 'Then, you don't need me to say it over again, Jabez.' 'Well, let be how 'twill, what was he gettin' _after_ when he said what he said to me?' Jabez insisted. 'I dunno; unless you tell me what manner o' words he said to _you_.' Jabez drew back from the hedge--all hedges are nests of treachery and eavesdropping--and moved to an open cattle-lodge in the centre of the field. 'No need to go ferretin' around,' said Jesse. 'None can't see us here 'fore we see them.' 'What was Jim Wickenden gettin' at when I said he'd set his stack too near anigh the brook?' Jabez dropped his voice. 'He was in his mind.' 'He ain't never been out of it yet to my knowledge,' Jesse drawled, and uncorked his tea-bottle. 'But then Jim says: "I ain't goin' to shift my stack a yard," he says. "The Brook's been good friends to me, and if she be minded," he says, "to take a snatch at my hay, I ain't settin' out to withstand her." That's what Jim Wickenden says to me last--last June-end 'twas,' said Jabez. 'Nor he hasn't shifted his stack, neither,' Jesse replied. 'An' if there's more rain, the brook she'll shift it for him.' 'No need tell _me_! But I want to know what Jim was gettin' _at_?'