He knew he was a stranger, nowadays, he said, and what had been good enough for them for so long was sure good enough for him. That was one way of looking at it, no doubt. But--now he didn’t want to put on frills!--he’d knocked about the world more than a bit, and he’d seen little jokes played by Nature that here on the marsh they’d just laugh down and out if he was fool enough to waste time telling them. But they had set his mind’s eye jumping, and it was still jumping when he settled down at Thweng. At first he had been content to take the word of older men than himself, but after a while that mind’s eye of his got jumping again, and told him right out that the Lugg had got the cinch on the top marsh-farms. No, he didn’t believe they were safe! He had a slap-up, cracker-jack reason for refusing to believe it, but he meant to keep it to himself, along with the jokes in meteorology. They had no guarantee, except an almighty run of luck, (that was probably pretty well run out, by now), that the Lugg wasn’t throttling the bay. They had never had a real storm to test it, not one of those storms that could buck the roof off creation. The Lugg had never seen the real goods. There had been an imitation, fifty or sixty years back--his uncle would remember it--when the marsh roads were under water for a week. There was no Let then, certainly, but he opined the Let wouldn’t have made much difference, and anyway the flood had had full room. That wasn’t the case, now. They had no guarantee--he struck one hand against the other and the cousin copied him, while Denny swam harder than ever--he didn’t mind repeating it, because it was the thing he wanted to hammer plum into their minds--_they had no guarantee that the Lugg wasn’t throttling the bay_! It wasn’t as if the tides were backing off. He guessed it was the other way about. From what he could remember before he went West, the force of the inflow was greater now than it had been then. He wasn’t setting out to say it was much, but the mere fact itself meant a lot. He called upon his uncle to say how close on Pippin walls the last winter tides had brought the sea. Avuncular love failed him, however, for Willie, disgusted at being thus dragged in without notice, was understood to reply that he wasn’t “in t’dock or any sic-like spot,” and Brack had to fall back once more upon his own unsupported eloquence. It wasn’t as if the Lugg protected the north farms. It hadn’t even that excuse. Ninekyrkes and Ladyford were safe enough, W.P. and G.W., with the Let to guard them. But all the Lugg protected was land clean robbed from the sea, while it threatened other land that the sea had given them of its own accord. So far, the sea hadn’t fired them out, but it would do it some day. He was dead sure the estate was crowding its luck! As tenant of a marsh-farm, sharing what he reckoned a very real danger, he asked his lordship right now to give the matter his earnest attention.