CHAPTER LIV.
GOING UP THE TREE
In all the British army – then a walking wood of British oak, without a yard of sapling – there was no bit of better stuff than the five feet and a quarter (allowing for his good game leg) of Major, by this time Colonel Clumps. This officer knew what he had to do, and he made a point of doing it. Being short of imagination, he despised that foolish gift, and marvelled over and over again at others for laughing so at nothing. That whimsical tickling of the veins of thought, which some people give so and some receive (with equal delight on either side), humour, or wit, or whatever it is, to Colonel Clumps was a vicious thing. Everything must be either true or false. If it were true, who could laugh at the truth? If it were false, who should laugh at a falsehood?
Many a good man has reasoned thus, reducing laughter under law, and himself thenceforth abandoned by that lawless element. Colonel Clumps had always taken solid views of everything, and the longer he lived in the world the less he felt inclined to laugh at it. But, that laughter might not be robbed of all its dues and royalties, just nature had provided that, as the Colonel would not laugh at the world, the world should laugh at the Colonel. He had been the subject of more bad jokes, one-sided pleasantries, and heartless hoaxes, than any other man in the army; with the usual result that now he scarcely ever believed the truth, while he still retained, for the pleasure of his friends, a tempting stock of his native confidence in error. So it came to pass that when Colonel Clumps (after the battle of Vittoria, in which he had shown conspicuous valour) was told of poor Hilary’s sad disgrace, he was a great deal too clever and astute to believe a single word of it.
“It is ludicrous, perfectly ludicrous!” he said, that being the strongest adjective he knew to express pure impossibility. “A gallant young fellow to be cashiered without even a court-martial! How dare you tell me such a thing, sir? I am not a man to be rough-ridden. Nobody ever has imposed on me. And the boy is almost a sort of cousin of my own. The first family in the kingdom, sir.”
The colonel flew into so great a rage, twisting his white hair, and stamping his lame heel, that the officer who had brought the news, being one of his own subalterns, wisely retired into doubts about it, and hinted that nobody knew the reason, and therefore that it could not be true.
“If I mention that absurd report about young Lorraine,” thought Colonel Clumps, when writing to Lady de Lampnor, “I may do harm, and I can do no good, but only get myself laughed at as the victim of a stupid hoax. So I will say no more about him, except that I have not seen him lately, being so far from head-quarters, and knowing how Old Beaky is driving the staff about.” And before the brave Colonel found opportunity of taking the pen in hand again, he was heavily wounded in a skirmish with the French rear-guard, and ordered home, as hereafter will appear.
It also happened that Mr. Capper’s friends, those two officers who had earned so little of Mabel’s gratitude by news of Hilary, were harassed and knocked about too much to find any time for writing letters. And as the Gazette in those days neglected the smaller concerns of the army, and became so hurried by the march of events, and the rapid sequence of battles, that the doings of junior officers slipped through its fingers until long afterwards, the result was that neither Coombe Lorraine nor Old Applewood farm received for months any news of the young staff officer. Neither did he yet present himself at either of those homesteads. For, as the ancient saying runs, misfortunes never come alone. The ship in which Hilary sailed for England from the port of Cadiz – for he found no transport at Malaga —The Flower of Kent, as she was called, which appeared to him an excellent omen, was nipped in the bud of her homeward voyage. She met with a nasty French privateer to the southward of Cape Finisterre. In vain she crowded sail, and tried every known resource of seamanship; the Frenchman had the heels of her, and laid her on board at sundown. Lorraine, and two or three old soldiers, battered and going to hospital, had no idea of striking, except in the British way of doing it. But the master and mate knew better, and stopped the hopeless conflict. So the Frenchman sacked and scuttled the ship in the most scientific manner, and, wanting no prisoners, landed the crew on a desolate strand of Gallicia, without any money to save them.
This being their condition, it is the proper thing to leave them so; for nothing is more unwise than to ask, or rather to “institute inquiries,” as to the doings of people who are much too likely to require a loan; therefore return we to the South Down hills.
The wet, ungenial, and stormy summer of 1813 was passing into a wetter, more cheerless, and most tempestuous autumn. On the northern slopes of the light-earthed hills the moss had come over the herbage, and the sweet nibble of the sheep was souring. The huddled trees (which here and there rise just to the level of the ridge, and then seem polled by the sweep of the wind-rush), the bushes also, and the gorse itself, stood, or rather stooped, beneath the burden of perpetual wet. The leaves hung down in a heavy drizzle, unable to detach themselves from the welting of the unripe stalks; the husk of the beech and the key of the ash were shrivelled for want of kernels, and the clusters of the hazel-nut had no sun-varnish on them. The weakness of the summer sun (whether his face was spotted overmuch, or too immaculate), and the humour of clouds, and the tenor of winds, and even the tendency of the earth itself to devolve into eccentricity, – these and a hundred other causes for the present state of the weather were found, according to where they were looked for. On one point only there was no contradiction, – things were not as they ought to be.
Even the Rector of West Lorraine, a man of most cheerful mind and not to be put down by any one, laying to the will of the Lord his failures, and to his own merits all good success, – even the Rev. Struan Hales was scarcely a match for the weather. Sportsmen in those days did not walk in sevenfold armour, for fear of a thorn, or a shower, or a cow-dab; nor skulked they two or three hours in a rick, awaiting the joy of one butchering minute. Fair play for man, and dog, and gun, and fur and feather, was then the rule; and a day of sport meant a day of work, and healthful change, and fine exercise. Therefore, Mr. Hales went forth with his long and heavily-loaded gun, to comfort himself and refresh his mind, whatever the weather might be about, upon six days out of every seven. The hounds had not begun to meet; the rivers were all in flood, of course; the air was so full of rheumatism that no man could crook his arm to write a sermon, or work a concordance. Two sick old women had taken a fancy for pheasant boiled with artichoke; – willy-nilly, the parson found it a momentous duty now to shoot.
And who went with him? There is no such thing as consistency of the human mind; yet well as this glorious truth was known, and bemoaned by every one for his neighbour’s sake – not they, not all the parish, nor even we of the enlarged philosophy, could or can ever be brought to believe our own eyes that it was Bonny! But, in spite of all impossibility, it was; and the explanation requires relapse.
Is it within recollection that the Rector once shot a boy in a hedge? The boy had clomb up into an ivied stump, for purposes of his own, combining espial with criticism. All critics deserve to be shot, if they dare to cross the grand aims of true enterprise. They pepper, and are peppered; but they generally get the best of it. And so did this boy that was shot in the hedge. Being of a crafty order, he dropped, and howled and rolled so piteously, that poor Mr. Hales, although he had fired at a distance of more than fourscore yards from the latent vagabond, cast down his gun in the horror of having slain a fellow-creature. But when he ran up, and turned him over to search for the fatal injury, the boy so vigorously kicked and roared, that the parson had great hopes of him. After some more rolling, a balance was struck; the boy had some blue spots under his skin, and a broad gold guinea to plaster them.
Now this boy was not our Bonny, nor fit in any way to compare with him. But uncivilized minds are very jealous; and next to our Bonny, this boy that was shot was the furthest from civilization of all the boys of the neighbourhood. Therefore, of course, bitter jealousy raged betwixt him and the real outsider. Now the boy that was shot got a new pair of boots from the balance of his guinea, and a new pair of legs to his nether garments, under his mother’s guidance. And to show what he was, and remove all doubts of the genuine expenditure, his father and mother combined and pricked him, with a pin in a stick, to the Sunday-school. Here Madge Hales (the second and strongest daughter of the church) laid hold of him, and converted him into right views of theology, hanging upon sound pot-hooks.
But a far greater mind than Bill Harkles could own was watching this noble experiment. Bonny had always hankered kindly after a knowledge of “pictur-books.” The gifts of nature were hatching inside him, and chipped at the shell of his chickenhood. He had thrashed Bill Harkles in two fair fights, without any aid from his donkey, and he felt that Bill’s mind had no right whatever to be brought up to look down on him.
This boy, therefore, being sneered at by erudite Bill Harkles, knew that his fists would be no fair answer, and retired to his cave. Here he looked over his many pickings, and proudly confessing inferior learning, refreshed himself with superior wealth. And this meditation, having sound foundation, satisfied him till the next market-day – the market-day at Steyning. Bonny had not much business here, but he always liked to look at things; and sometimes he got a good pannier of victuals, and sometimes he got nothing. For the farmers of the better sort put off their dinner till two o’clock, when the prime of the market was over, and then sat down to boiled beef and carrots in the yard of the White Horse Inn, and often did their best in that way.
Of this great “ordinary” – great at any rate as regards consumption – Farmer Gates, the churchwarden, was by ancestral right the chairman; but for several market-days the vice-presidency had been vacant. A hot competition had raged, and all Steyning had thrilled with high commotion about the succession to the knife and fork at the bottom of the table; until it was announced amid general applause that Bottler was elected. It was a proud day for this good pigman, and perhaps a still prouder one for Bonny, when the new vice-president was inducted into the Windsor chair at the foot of the long and ancient table; and it marked the turning-point in the life of more than one then present.
The vice-president’s cart was in the shed close by, and on the front lade sat Bonny, sniffing the beauty of the “silver-side,” and the luscious suggestions of the marrow-bone. Polly longed fiercely to be up there with him; but her mother’s stern sense of decorum forbade; the pretty Miss Bottlers would be toasted after dinner, – and was one to be spied in a pig-cart? No sooner was the cloth removed, than the chairman proposed, in most feeling and eloquent language, the health of his new colleague. And now it was Bottler’s reply which created a grand revolution in Steyning. With graceful modesty he ascribed his present proud position, the realization of his fondest hopes, neither to his well-known integrity, industry, strict attention to business, nor even the quality of his bacon. All these things, of course, contributed; but “what was the grand element of his unparalleled success in life?” A cry of “white stockings!” from the Bramber pig-sticker was sternly suppressed, and the man kicked out. “The grand element of his success in life was his classical education!”
Nobody knowing what was meant by this, thunders of applause ensued; until it was whispered from cup to cup that Bottler, when he was six years old, had been three months at the Grammar School. He might have forgotten every word he had learned, but any one might see that it was dung dug in. So a dozen of the farmers resolved at once to have their children Latined; and Bonny in his inmost heart aspired to some education. What was the first step to golden knowledge? He put this question to himself obscurely, as he rode home on his faithful Jack, with all the marrow-bones of the great feast rattling in a bag behind him. From the case of Bill Harkles he reasoned soundly, that the first thing to do was to go and get shot.
On the following day – the month being August, or something very near it, in the year 1812 (a year behind the time we got on to) – Mr. Hales, to keep his hand in, took his favourite flint-gun down, and patted it, and reprimed it. He had finished his dinner, it had been a good one; and his partner in life had been lamenting the terrible price of butcher’s meat. She did not see how it could end in anything short of a wicked rebellion, when the price of bread was put with it. And the Rector had answered, with a wink to Cecil, “Order no meat for to-morrow, my dear, nor even for the next day. We shall see what we shall see.” With this power of promise, he got on his legs, and stopped all who were fain to come after him. He knew every coney and coney’s hole on the glebe, and on the clerk’s land; and they all would now be out at grass, and must be treated gingerly. He was going to shoot for the pot, as sportsmen generally did in those days.
With visions of milky onions, about to be poured on a broad and well-boiled back, the Rector (after sneaking through a furzy gate) peeped down a brown trench of the steep hill-side; here he spied three little sandy juts of Recent excavation, and on each of them sat a hunch-backed coney, proud of the labours of the day, and happily curling his whiskers. The Rector, peering downward, saw the bulging over their large black eyes, and the prick of their delicate ears, and their gentle chewing of the grass-blade. There was no chance of a running shot, for they would pop into earth in a moment; so he tried to get two of them into a line, and then he pulled his trigger. The nearest rabbit fell dead as a stone; but the Rector could scarcely believe his eyes, when through the curls of the smoke he beheld, instead of the other rabbit, a ragged boy rolling, and kicking, and holloaing!
“Am I never to shoot without shooting a boy?” cried the parson, rushing forward. “Another guinea! A likely thing! I vow I will only pay a shilling this time. The sport would ruin a bishop!”
But Mr. Hales found to his great delight that the boy was not touched by a shot, nor even made pretence to be so. He had craftily crept through the bushes from below, and quietly lurked near the rabbit’s hole, and after the shot, had darted forth, and thrown himself cleverly on the wounded rabbit, who otherwise must have got away to die a lingering death in his burrow. The quickness and skill of the boy, and the luck of thus bagging both rabbits, so pleased the Rector that he gave him sixpence, and bade him follow, to carry the game and to see more sport. Bonny had a natural turn for sport, which never could be beaten out of him, and to get it encouraged by the rector of the parish was indeed a godsend. And in his excitement at every shot, he poured forth his heart about rabbits, and hares, and wood-queests, and partridges, and even pheasants.
“Why, you know more than I do!” said the Rector, kindly laying his hand on the shoulder of the boy, after loading for his tenth successful shot. “How ever have you picked up all these things? The very worst poacher of the coming age; or else the best gamekeeper.”
“I looks about, or we does, me and Jack together,” answered Bonny, with one of his broadest and most genuine grins; and the gleam of his teeth, and the twinkle of his eyes, enforced the explanation.
“Come to my house in the morning, Bonny,” said the Rector. And that was the making of him. For the boy that cleaned the knives and boots had never conscientiously filled that sphere, though he was captain of the Bible-class. And now he had taken the measles so long, that they had put him to earth the celery. Here was an opening, and Bonny seized it; and though he made very queer work at first, his native ability carried him on, till he put a fine polish on everything. From eighteenpence a week he rose to two and threepence, within nine months; and to this he soon added the empty bottles, and a commission upon the grease-pot!
Even now, all has not been told; for by bringing the cook good news of her sweetheart, and the parlourmaid dry sticks to light her fire, and by showing a tender interest in the chilblains of even the scullerymaid, he became such a favourite in the kitchen, that the captain of the Bible-class defied him to a battle in the wash-house. The battle was fought, and victory, though long doubtful, perched at last upon the banner of brave Bonny; and with mutual esteem, and four black eyes, the heroes parted.
After this all ran smooth. The Rector (who had enjoyed the conflict from his study-window, without looking off, more than he could help, from a sermon upon “Seek peace, and ensue it”), as soon as he had satisfied himself which of the two boys hit the straighter, went to an ancient wardrobe, and examined his bygone hunting clothes. Here he found an old scarlet coat, made for him thirty years ago at Oxford, but now a world too small; and he sighed that he had no son to inherit it. Also a pair of old buckskin breeches, fitter for his arms than his legs just now. The moths were in both; they were growing scurfy; sentiment must give way to sense. So Bonny got coat and breeches; and the maids with merry pinches, and screams of laughter, and consolatory kisses, adapted them. He showed all his grandeur to his donkey Jack, and Jack was in two minds about snapping at it.
This matter being cleared, and the time brought up, here we are at West Lorraine in earnest, in the month of October, 1813; long after Hilary’s shocking disgrace, but before any of his own people knew it.
CHAPTER LV.
THE WOEBURN
“What a lazy loon that Steenie Chapman is!” said the Rector, for about the twentieth time, one fine October morning. “He knows what dreadful weather we get now, and yet he can’t be here by nine o’clock! Too bad, I call it; too bad a great deal. Send away the teapot, Caroline.”
“But, my dear,” answered Mrs. Hales, who always made the best of every one, “you forget how very bad the roads must be, after all the rain we have had. And I am sure he will want a cup of tea after riding through such flooded roads.”
“Tea, indeed!” the parson muttered, as he strode in and out of the room, with his shot-belt dancing on his velveteen shooting-coat, and snapped his powder-flask impatiently; “Steenie’s tea comes from the case, not the caddy. And the first gleam of sunshine I’ve seen for a week, after that heavy gale last night. It will rain before twelve o’clock, for a guinea. Cecil, run and see if you can find that boy Bonny. I shall start by myself, and send Bonny down the road with a message for Captain Chapman.”
“The huntsman came out of the back-kitchen, Cecil, about two minutes ago,” said Madge, who never missed a chance of a cut at Bonny, because he had thrashed her pet Bible-scholar; “he was routing about, with his red coat on, for scraps of yellow soap and candle-ends.”
“What a story!” cried Cecil, who was Bonny’s champion, being his schoolmistress; “I wish your Dick was half as good a boy. He gets honester every day almost. I’ll send him to you, papa, in two seconds. I suppose you’ll speak to him at the side-door.”
At a nod from her father, away she ran, while Madge followed slowly to help in the search; and finding that the boy had left the house, they took different paths in the garden to seek him, or overtake him on his homeward way. In a few moments Cecil, as she passed some laurels, held up her hand to recall her sister, and crossed the grass towards her very softly, with finger on lip and a mysterious look.
“Hush! and come here very quietly,” she whispered; “I’ll show you something as good as a play.” Then the two girls peeped through the laurel-bush, and watched with great interest what was going on.
In an alley of the kitchen-garden sat Bonny upon an old sea-kale pot, clad in his red coat and white breeches, and deeply meditating. Before him, upon an espalier tree, hung a tempting and beautiful apple, a scarlet pearmain, with its sleek sides glistening in the slant of the sunbeams.
“I’ll lay you a shilling he steals it,” Madge whispered into the ear of her sister. “Done,” replied Cecil, with her hand before her mouth. Meanwhile Bonny was giving them the benefit of his train of reasoning. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes very bright, and his forehead a field of perplexity.
“They’s all agrubbing in the house,” he reflected; “and they ain’t been and offered me a bit to-day. There’s ever so many more on the tree; and they locked up the scullery cupboard; and one on ’em called me a little warmint; and they tuck the key out of the beertap.”
With all these wrongs upward, he stretched forth his hand, and pretty Cecil trembled for her shilling, shillings being very scarce with her. But the boy, without quite having touched the apple, drew back his hand; and that withdrawal perhaps was the turning-point of his life.
“He gived me all this,” he said, looking at his sleeve; “and all on ’em stitched it up for me; and they lets me go in and out without watching; and twice I’se been out with him, shutting! I ’ont, I ’ont. And them coorse red apples seldom be worth ating of.”
Sturdily he arose, and gave a kick at one of the posts of the apple-tree, and set off for the gate as hard as he could go, while the virtuous vein should be uppermost.
“What a darling of honour!” cried Cecil Hales, jumping after him. “A Bayard, a Cato, an Aristides! He shall have his apple, and he shall have sixpence; and unlimited faith for ever. Bonny! come back. Here’s your apple for you, and sixpence; and what would you like to have best in all the world now?”
“To go out shutting with the master, miss.”
“You shall do it; I will speak to papa myself. If you please, Miss Madge, pay up your shilling. Now come back, Bonny; your master wants you.”
“You are a little too late for your errand, I fear,” answered Margaret, pulling her purse out; “while you were pursuing this boy, I heard the sound of a grand arrival.”
“So much the better!” cried Cecil, who (like her mother) always made the best of things. “Papa has been teasing his gun for an hour. Bonny, run back, and keep old Shot quiet. He will break his chain, by the noise he makes. You are as bad as he is; and you both shall go.”
The Rector – of all men the most hospitable, though himself so sober in the morning – revived Captain Chapman, or at least refreshed him, with brandy and bitters, after that long ride. And keenly heeding all hindrance, in his own hurry to be starting, he thought it a very bad sign for poor Alice, that Stephen received no comfort from one, nor two, nor even three, large glasses.
At length they set forth, with a sickly sun shrinking back from the promise of the morning, and a vaporous glisten in the white south-east, looking as watery as the sea. “I told you so, Steenie,” said the parson, who knew every sign of the weather among these hills; “we ought to have started two hours sooner. If ever we had wet jackets in our life, we shall have them to-day, bold captain.”
“It will bring in the snipes,” said the captain, bravely. “We are not the sort of men, I take it, to heed a little sprinkle. Tom, have you got my bladder-coat?”
“All right, your honour,” his keeper replied: and “See-ho!” cried Bonny, while the dogs were ranging.
“Where, where, where?” asked the captain, dancing in a breathless flurry round a tuft of heath. “I can’t see him; where is he, boy?”
“Poke her up, boy,” said the Rector; “surely you would not shoot the poor thing on her form!”
“Let him sit till I see him,” cried the captain, cocking both his barrels; “now I am ready. Where the devil is he?”
“She can’t run away,” answered Bonny, “because your honour’s heel be on her whiskers. Ah, there her gooth! Quick, your honour!”
And go she did in spite of his honour, and both the loads he sent after her; while the Rector laughed so at the captain’s plight, that it was quite impossible for him to shoot. The keeper also put on an experienced grin, while Bonny flung open all the cavern of his mouth.
“Run after him, boy! Look alive!” cried the captain. “I defy him to go more than fifty yards. You must all have seen how I peppered him.”
“Ay, and salted her too, I believe,” said the parson: “look along the barrel of my gun, and you will see the salt still on her tail, Steenie?”
As he pointed they all saw the gallant hare at a leisurely canter crossing the valley, some quarter of a mile below them.
“What!” cried the Rector; “did you see that jump? What can there be to jump over there?” For puss had made a long bound from bank to bank, at a place where they could not see the bottom.
“Water, if ’e plaize, sir,” answered Bonny; “a girt strame of water comed down that hollow, all of a sudden this mornint; and it hath been growing stronger ever since.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Hales, dropping his gun. “What is the water like, boy?”
“I never seed no water like it afore. As black as what I does your boots with, sir; but as clear – you can see every stone in it.”
“Then the Lord have mercy on this poor parish; and especially to the old house of Lorraine! For the Woeburn has broken out again.”
“Why, Rector, you seem in a very great fright,” said Captain Chapman, recovering slowly from his sad discomfiture. “What is the matter about this water? Some absurd old superstition – is not it?”
“Superstition or not,” Mr. Hales answered shortly, “I must leave you to shoot by yourself, Captain Chapman. I could not fire another shot to-day. It is more than three hundred and fifty years since this water of death was seen. In my church you may read what happened then. And not only that, but according to tradition its course runs directly through our village, and even through my garden. My people know nothing about it yet. It may burst upon them quite suddenly. There are many obstructions, no doubt, in its course, and many hollow places to fill up. But before many hours it will reach us. As a question of prudence, I must hasten home. Shot, come to heel this moment!”
“You are right,” said the captain; “I shall do the same. Your hospitable board will excuse me to-night. I would much rather not leap the Woeburn in the dark.”
With the instinct of a man of the world, he perceived that the Rector, under this depression, would prefer to have no guest. Moreover, the clouds were gathering with dark menace over the hill-tops; and he was not the man – if such man there be – to find pleasure in a wet day’s shooting.
“No horse has ever yet crossed the Woeburn,” Mr. Hales replied, as they all turned homeward across the shoulder of the hill; “at least, if the legends about that are true. Though a hare may have leaped it to-day, to-morrow no horse will either swim or leap it.”
“Bless my heart! does it rise like that? The sooner we get out of its way the better. What a pest it will be to you, Rector! Why, you never will be able to come to the meet, and our opening day is next Tuesday.”
“Steenie,” cried the Rector, imbibing hope, “it has not struck me in that light before. But it scarcely could ever be the will of the Lord to cut off a parson from his own pack!”
“Oh, don’t walk so fast!” shouted Captain Chapman; “one’s neck might be broken down a hill like this. Tom, let me lean on your shoulder. Boy, I’ll give you sixpence to carry my gun. Tom take the flints out, that he mayn’t shoot me. Here, Uncle Struan, just sit down a minute; a minute can’t make any difference, you know.”
“That is true,” said the Rector, who was also out of breath. “Bonny, how far was the black water come? You seem to know all about it.”
“Plaize, sir, it seem to be coming down a hill; and the longer I looked, the more water was a-coming.”
“You little nincompoop! had it passed your own door yet – your hole, or your cave, or whatever you call it?”
“Plaize, sir, it worn’t a runnin’ towards I at all. It wor makin’ a hole in the ground and kickin’ a splash up in a fuzzy corner.”
“My poor boy, its course is not far from your door; it may be in among your goods, and have drowned your jackass and all, by this time.”
Like an arrow from a bow, away went Bonny down the headlong hill, having cast down the captain’s gun, and pulled off his red coat to run the faster. The three men left behind clapped their hands to their sides and roared with laughter; at such a pace went the white buckskin breeches, through bramble, gorse, heather, over rock, sod, and chalk. “What a grand flying shot!” cried the keeper.
“Where the treasure is, there will the heart be,” said the Rector as soon as he could speak. “I would give a month’s tithes for a good day’s rout among that boy’s accumulations. He has got the most wonderful things, they say; and he keeps them on shelves, like a temple of idols. What will he do when he gets too big to go in at his own doorway? I am feeding him up with a view to that; and so are my three daughters.”
“He must be a thorough young thief,” said the captain. “In any other parish he would be in prison. I scarcely know which is the softer ‘beak’ – as we are called – you, or Sir Roland.”
“Tom,” cried the Rector, “run on before us; you are young and active. Inquire where old Nanny Stilgoe lives, at the head of the village, and tell her that the flood is coming upon her; and help her to move her things, poor old soul, if she will let you help her. Tell her I sent you, and perhaps she will, although she is very hard to deal with. She has long been foretelling this break of the bourne; but the prophets are always the last to set their own affairs in order.”