n't end by
belieftin' it--sometimes.

Hobden crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his pipe at the yellow
lanthorn flame. Tom rested one great elbow on one great knee, where he
sat among the coal.

'Have you ever bin in the Marsh?' he said to Dan.

'Only as far as Rye, once,' Dan answered.

'Ah, that's but the edge. Back behind of her there's steeples settin'
beside churches, an' wise women settin' beside their doors, an' the sea
settin' above the land, an' ducks herdin' wild in the diks' (he meant
ditches). 'The Marsh is just about riddled with diks an' sluices, an'
tide-gates an' water-lets. You can hear 'em bubblin' an' grummelin'
when the tide works in 'em, an' then you hear the sea rangin' left and
right-handed all up along the Wall. You've seen how flat she is--the
Marsh? You'd think nothin' easier than to walk eend-on acrost her?
Ah, but the diks an' the water-lets, they twists the roads about as
ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. So ye get all turned round in
broad daylight.'

'That's because they've dreened the waters into the diks,' said Hobden.
'When I courted my woman the rushes was green--Eh me! the rushes was
green--an' the Bailiff o' the Marshes he rode up and down as free as
the fog.'

'Who was he?' said Dan.

'Why, the Marsh fever an' ague. He've clapped me on the shoulder once
or twice till I shook proper. But now the dreenin' off of the waters
have done away with the fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the
Bailiff o' the Marshes broke his neck in a dik. A won'erful place for
bees an' ducks 'tis too.'

'An' old,' Tom went on. 'Flesh an' Blood have been there since Time
Everlastin' Beyond. Well, now, speakin' among themselves, the Marsh
men say that from Time Everlastin' Beyond, the Pharisees favoured the
Marsh above the rest of Old England. I lay the Marsh men ought to
know. They've been out after dark, father an' son, smugglin' some one
thing or t'other, since ever wool grew to sheep's backs. They say
there was always a middlin' few Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh.
Impident as rabbits, they was. They'd dance on the nakid roads in the
nakid daytime; they'd flash their liddle green lights along the diks,
comin' an' goin', like honest smugglers. Yes, an' times they'd lock
the church doors against parson an' clerk of Sundays.'

'That 'ud be smugglers layin' in the lace or the brandy till they could
run it out o' the Marsh. I've told my woman so,' said Hobden.