ees from all England
over, strivin' all means to get through at Flesh an' Blood to tell 'em
their sore need... I don't know as you've ever heard say Pharisees are
like chickens?'

'My woman used to say that too,'said Hobden, folding his brown arms.

'They be. You run too many chickens together, an' the ground sickens,
like, an' you get a squat, an' your chickens die. Same way, you crowd
Pharisees all in one place--they don't die, but Flesh an' Blood walkin'
among 'em is apt to sick up an' pine off. They don't mean it, an'
Flesh an' Blood don't know it, but that's the truth--as I've heard.
The Pharisees through bein' all stenched up an' frighted, an' trying'
to come through with their supplications, they nature-ally changed the
thin airs an' humours in Flesh an' Blood. It lay on the Marsh like
thunder. Men saw their churches ablaze with the wildfire in the
windows after dark; they saw their cattle scatterin' an' no man
scarin'; their sheep flockin' an' no man drivin'; their horses
latherin' an' no man leadin'; they saw the liddle low green lights more
than ever in the dik-sides; they heard the liddle feet patterin' more
than ever round the houses; an' night an' day, day an' night, 'twas all
as though they were bein' creeped up on, an' hinted at by Some One or
other that couldn't rightly shape their trouble. Oh, I lay they
sweated! Man an' maid, woman an' child, their nature done 'em no
service all the weeks while the Marsh was swarvin' up with Pharisees.
But they was Flesh an' Blood, an' Marsh men before all. They reckoned
the signs sinnified trouble for the Marsh. Or that the sea 'ud rear up
against Dymchurch Wall an' they'd be drownded like Old Winchelsea; or
that the Plague was comin'. So they looked for the meanin' in the sea
or in the clouds--far an' high up. They never thought to look near an'
knee-high, where they could see naught.

'Now there was a poor widow at Dymchurch under the Wall, which, lacking
man or property, she had the more time for feeling; and she come to
feel there was a Trouble outside her doorstep bigger an' heavier than
aught she'd ever carried over it. She had two sons--one born blind,
an' t'other struck dumb through fallin' off the Wall when he was
liddle. They was men grown, but not wage-earnin', an' she worked for
'em, keepin' bees and answerin' Questions.'

'What sort of questions?' said Dan.

'Like where lost things might be found, an' what to put about a crooked
baby's