'The old lady bundled her off to the village 'fore her Lunnon father come, to buy week-end stuff (an' she forgot the half o' it). When we come in she was upstairs studyin' to be a school-teacher. None told her naun about it. 'Twadn't girls' affairs.' 'Reckon _she_ knowed?' Jabez went on. 'She? She must have guessed it middlin' close when she saw her money come back. But she never mentioned it in writing so far's I know. She were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens bein' drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her postes. I cobbled her up next mornin' when the brook shrinked.' 'An' where did you find the bridge? Some fur down-stream, didn't ye?' 'Just where she allus was. She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.' 'Well, I dunno how it _looks_ like, but let be how 'twill,' said Jabez, 'he hadn't no business to come down from Lunnon tarrifyin' people, an' threatenin' to take away children which they'd hobbed up for their lawful own--even if 'twas Mary Wickenden.' 'He had the business right enough, an' he had the law with him--no gettin' over that,' said Jesse. 'But he had the drink with him, too, an' that was where he failed, like.' 'Well, well! Let be how 'twill, the brook was a good friend to Jim. I see it now. I allus _did_ wonder what he was gettin' at when he said that, when I talked to him about shiftin' the stack. "You dunno everythin'," he ses. "The Brook's been a good friend to me," he ses, "an' if she's minded to have a snatch at my hay, _I_ ain't settin' out to withstand her."' 'I reckon she's about shifted it, too, by now,' Jesse chuckled. 'Hark! That ain't any slip off the bank which she's got hold of.' The Brook had changed her note again. It sounded as though she were mumbling something soft. THE LAND When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald, In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field, He called to him Hobdenius--a Briton of the Clay, Saying: 'What about that River-piece for layin' in to hay?' And the aged Hobden answered: 'I remember as a lad My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad. An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her clean. Have it jest _as_ you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd dreen.' So they drained it long and crossways in the lavish Roman style. Still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile, And in drouthy middle August, when the bones of meadows show, We can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago.