and Thorn, good Sirs_
_(All of a Midsummer morn)!_
_England shall bide till Judgment Tide,_
_By Oak, and Ash and Thorn!_

YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR

YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR

They were fishing, a few days later, in the bed of the brook that for
centuries had cut deep into the soft valley soil. The trees closing
overhead made long tunnels through which the sunshine worked in blobs and
patches. Down in the tunnels were bars of sand and gravel, old roots and
trunks covered with moss or painted red by the irony water; foxgloves
growing lean and pale towards the light; clumps of fern and thirsty shy
flowers who could not live away from moisture and shade. In the pools you
could see the wave thrown up by the trouts as they charged hither and yon,
and the pools were joined to each other--except in flood time, when all was
one brown rush--by sheets of thin broken water that poured themselves
chuckling round the darkness of the next bend.

This was one of the children's most secret hunting-grounds, and their
particular friend, old Hobden the hedger, had shown them how to use it.
Except for the click of a rod hitting a low willow, or a switch and tussle
among the young ash-leaves as a line hung up for the minute, nobody in the
hot pasture could have guessed what game was going on among the trouts
below the banks.

'We's got half-a-dozen,' said Dan, after a warm, wet hour. 'I vote we go
up to Stone Bay and try Long Pool.'

Una nodded--most of her talk was by nods--and they crept from the gloom of
the tunnels towards the tiny weir that turns the brook into the
mill-stream. Here the banks are low and bare, and the glare of the
afternoon sun on the Long Pool below the weir makes your eyes ache.

When they were in the open they nearly fell down with astonishment. A huge
grey horse, whose tail-hairs crinkled the glassy water, was drinking in
the pool, and the ripples about his muzzle flashed like melted gold. On
his back sat an old, white-haired man dressed in a loose glimmery gown of
chain-mail. He was bareheaded, and a nut-shaped iron helmet hung at his
saddle-bow. His reins were of red leather five or six inches deep,
scalloped at the edges, and his high padded saddle with its red girths was
held fore and aft by a red leather breastband and crupper.

'Look!' said Una, as though Dan were not staring his very eyes out. 'It's
like the picture in your room--"Sir Isumbras at the Ford."'

The rider turned t