unnon father?' said Jabez after a full
minute's silence.

'I be too tired to go readin' papers of evenin's; but Dockett he told
me, that very week, I think, that they'd inquested on a man down at
Robertsbridge which had poked and poked up agin' so many bridges an'
banks, like, they couldn't make naun out of him.'

'An' what did Mary say to all these doin's?'

'The old lady bundled her off to the village 'fore her Lunnon father
come, to buy week-end stuff (an' she forgot the half o' it). When we
come in she was upstairs studyin' to be a school-teacher. None told her
naun about it. 'Twadn't girls' affairs.'

'Reckon _she_ knowed?' Jabez went on.

'She? She must have guessed it middlin' close when she saw her money
come back. But she never mentioned it in writing so far's I know. She
were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens
bein' drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her
postes. I cobbled her up next mornin' when the brook shrinked.'

'An' where did you find the bridge? Some fur down-stream, didn't ye?'

'Just where she allus was. She hadn't shifted but very little. The brook
had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o' the plank, so's she
was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn't careful. But I pooked
three-four bricks under her, an' she was all plumb again.'

'Well, I dunno how it _looks_ like, but let be how 'twill,' said Jabez,
'he hadn't no business to come down from Lunnon tarrifyin' people, an'
threatenin' to take away children which they'd hobbed up for their
lawful own--even if 'twas Mary Wickenden.'

'He had the business right enough, an' he had the law with him--no
gettin' over that,' said Jesse. 'But he had the drink with him, too, an'
that was where he failed, like.'

'Well, well! Let be how 'twill, the brook was a good friend to Jim. I
see it now. I allus _did_ wonder what he was gettin' at when he said
that, when I talked to him about shiftin' the stack. "You dunno
everythin'," he ses. "The Brook's been a good friend to me," he ses,
"an' if she's minded to have a snatch at my hay, _I_ ain't settin' out
to withstand her."'

'I reckon she's about shifted it, too, by now,' Jesse chuckled. 'Hark!
That ain't any slip off the bank which she's got hold of.'

The Brook had changed her note again. It sounded as though she were
mumbling something soft.

THE LAND

When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the da