“Stop,” said Bevis. “Lean on me, and walk slow. Don’t you know you have caught a dreadful fever, from being in the swamps by the river, and you can hardly walk, and you are very thin and weak? Lean on my arm and hang your head.” Mark hung his head, turning his rosy cheeks down to the buttercups, and dragged his sturdy fever-stricken limbs along with an effort. “Humph!” said a gruff voice. “It’s the Indians!” cried Bevis, startled; for they were so absorbed they had not heard the Bailiff come up behind them. They quite jumped, as if about to be scalped. “What be you doing to that tree?” said the Bailiff. “Find out,” said Bevis. “It’s not your tree: and why don’t you say when you’re coming?” “I saw you from the hedge,” said the Bailiff. “I was telling John where to cut the bushes from for the new harrow.” That caused the rustling in the forest. “You’ll never chop he down.” “That we shall, if we want to.” “No, you won’t--he stops your ship.” “It isn’t a ship: it’s a raft.” “Well, you can’t get by.” “That we can.” “I thinks you be stopped,” said the Bailiff, having now looked at the tree more carefully. “He be main thick,”--with a certain sympathy for stolid, inanimate obstruction. “I tell you, people like us are never stopped by anything,” said Bevis. “We go through forests, and we float down rivers, and we shoot tigers, and move the biggest trees ever seen--don’t we, Mark?” “Yes, that we do: nothing is anything to us.” “Of course not,” said Bevis. “And if we can’t chop it down or blow it up, as we mean to, then we dig round it. O, Mark, I say! I forgot! Let’s dig a canal round it.” “How silly we were never to think of that!” said Mark. “A canal is the very thing--from here to the creek.” He meant where the stream curved to enclose the Peninsula: the proposed canal would make the voyage shorter. “Cut some sticks--quick!” said Bevis. “We must plug out our canal--that is what they always do first, whether it is a canal, or a railway, or a drain, or anything. And I must draw a plan. I must get my pocket-book and pencil. Come on, Mark, and get the spade while I get my pencil.” Off they ran. The Bailiff leaned on his hazel staff, one hand against the willow, and looked down into the water, as calmly as the sun itself reflected there. When he had looked awhile he shook his head and grunted: then he stumped away; and after a dozen yards or so, glanced back, grunted, and shook his head again. It could not be done. The tree was thick, the earth hard--no such thing: his sympathy, in a dull unspoken way, was with the immovable.