me and tide" wait for any one
and everybody--but alas! on this occasion we could not wait for them.

Our walk was nearing its end when we came upon a pathetic reminder that,
though the old canal is so far from being a stormy sea, there have been
wrecks even in those quiet waters. In a backwater whispered over by
willows and sung over by birds, a sort of water-side graveyard, eleven
old barges were ingloriously rotting, unwept and unhonoured. The hulks
of old men-of-war, forgotten as they may seem, have still their annual
days of bunting and the salutes of cannon; but to these old servitors of
peace come no such memorial recognitions.

"Unwept and unhonoured, may be," said I to my friend, "but they shall
not go all unsung, though humble be the rhyme"; so here is the rhyme I
affixed to an old nail on the mouldering side of the _Janita C.
Williams_:

You who have done your work and asked no praise,
Mouldering in these unhonoured waterways,
Carrying but simple peace and quiet fire,
Doing a small day's work for a small hire--
You need not praise, nor guns, nor flags unfurled,
Nor all such cloudy glories of the world;
The laurel of a simple duty done
Is the best laurel underneath the sun,
Yet would two strangers passing by this spot
Whisper, "Old boat--you are not all forgot!"

XIV

A MODERN SAINT FRANCIS

We were neither of us fox-hunting ourselves, but chanced both to be out
on our morning walk and to be crossing a breezy Surrey common at the
same moment, when the huntsmen and huntresses of the Slumberfold Hunt
were blithely congregating for a day's run. A meet is always an
attractive sight, and we had both come to a halt within a yard or two of
each other, and stood watching the gallant company of fine ladies and
gentlemen on their beautiful, impatient mounts, keeping up a prancing
conversation, till the exciting moment should arrive when the cry would
go up that the fox had been started, and the whole field would sweep
away, a cataract of hounds, red-coats, riding habits, and dog-carts.

The moment came. The fox had been found in a spinney running down to
Withy Brook, and his race for life had begun. With a happy shout, the
hunt was up and off in a twinkling, and the stranger and I were left
alone on the broad common.

I had scanned him furtively as he stood near me; a tall, slightly build
man of about f