ok behind you,"
was the reply. He looked, and behold! over the very spot he had left
in the morning--over his own home--the blue haze hung, as a veil of
beauty, with its exquisite promise. There is a moral and there is
comfort in this tale for him who fancies that he is the victim of
circumstances and surroundings. That is the man who, as my bailiff
used to say in harvest, has always got a heavier cut of wheat than his
neighbour in the same field, and is always finding himself "at the
wrong job."

CHAPTER XX.

CHANGING COURSE OF STREAMS--DEWPONDS--A WET HARVEST--WEATHER
PHENOMENA--WILL-O'-THE-WISP--VARIOUS.

"There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O Earth, what changes hast thou seen!"
--_In Memoriam_.

"With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

"I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever."
_The Brook_.

Living so many years in one place I had unusual opportunities, as my
rounds nearly always took me beside my brooks, of watching their
slowly changing courses. The roots of the pollard willows helped to
keep them to their regular path by holding up the banks, but sometimes
when an old tree fell into the water it had an opposite result. A
fallen tree, reaching partly across the stream, has the immediate
effect of damming the flow of the water on the side of its growth and
diverting the current towards the opposite bank in a narrowed but more
powerful advance, so that the bank is worn away and the beginning of a
bend is formed. As the breach increases, the water, momentarily
retarded there by the new concavity, rushes forward again in the
direction of the bank from which the tree fell. So that a second
concavity is produced on that side some little way below the tree,
resulting in the slow formation of an extended S-like figure, or hook
with a double bend. The collection of rubbish and sediment retained by
the fallen tree helps to form a new bank on that side, extending
further into the stream than the bank on which the tree originally
stood.

As this process continues it is easy to see that a straight stretch of
stream will in time assume a winding course, and the stream will be
continually altering its path, so that