monks left a great gale raged over England. It was in
October, when the trees were full of leaf, and its fiercest gust tore
the great oak from its roothold, and flung it into the lake. Look! do
you see that rise in the sand, there, by the edge of the deep pool, in
the eight foot water? That is there it is supposed to lie. Well, the
whole country-side said that it was a sign that the monks had gone for
ever from Bratham Abbey, and the country-side was right. But when your
ancestor, old yeoman Caresfoot, bought this place and came to live
here, in a year when there was a great black frost that set the waters
of the lake like one of the new-fangled roads, he asked his
neighbours, ay, and his labouring folk, to come and dine with him and
drink to the success of his purchase. It was a proud day for him, and
when dinner was done and they were all mellow with strong ale, he bade
them step down to the borders of the lake, as he would have them be
witness to a ceremony. When they reached the spot they saw a curious
sight, for there on a strong dray, and dragged by Farmer Caresfoot's
six best horses, was an oak of fifty years' growth coming across the
ice, earth, roots and all.

"On that spot where it now stands there had been a great hole, ten
feet deep by fourteen feet square, dug to receive it, and into that
hole Caresfoot Staff was tilted and levered off the dray. And when it
had been planted, and the frozen earth well trodden in, your
grandfather in the ninth degree brought his guests back to the old
banqueting-hall, and made a speech which, as it was the first and last
he ever made, was long remembered in the country-side. It was, put
into modern English, something like this:

"'Neighbours,--Prior's Oak has gone into the water, and folks said
that it was for a sign that the monks would never come back to
Bratham, and that it was the Lord's wind that put it there. And,
neighbours, as ye know, the broad Bratham lands and the fat marshes
down by the brook passed by king's grant to a man that knew not clay
from loam, or layer from pasturage, and from him they passed by the
Lord's will to me, as I have asked you here to-day to celebrate. And
now, neighbours, I have a mind, and though it seem to you but a
childish thing, yet I have a mind, and have set myself to fulfil it.
When I was yet a little lad, and drove the swine out to feed on the
hill yonder, when the acorns had fallen, afore Farmer Gyrton's father
had gracious leave