Dick o' the Fens Part 21

Good-night, Dave, and thank you!" he shouted.

"Good-night, lads--good-night!" came off the water. Then there was a splash of the pole, and Dave disappeared in the moonlit mist which silvered the reeds, while the boys trudged the rest of their way home.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE DRAIN PROGRESSES.

The number of workers increased at the sea-bank, quite a colony growing up, and d.i.c.k paid several visits to the place with his father to see how busily the men were delving, while others built up what was termed a _gowt_--a flood-gate arrangement for keeping out the sea at high water, and opening it at low, so as to give egress to the drain-water collected from the fen-land.

Both lads were eager enough to be there to witness the progress of the works at first; but after going again and again, they voted the whole thing to be uninteresting, and no more worth seeing than the digging of one of the ditches on the farms at home.

And certainly there was no more difference than in the fact that the ditches at home were five or six feet wide, while the one the adventurers were having cut through the fen-land would be forty feet, and proportionately deep.

So the big drain progressed foot by foot, creeping on as it were from the sea-sh.o.r.e, an innocent-looking channel that seemed valueless, but which would, when finished, rid the land of its stagnant water, and turn the boggy, peaty soil of the fen into rich pasture and corn-land, whereas its finest produce now was wild-fowl and a harvest of reeds.

"We're getting on, neighbour," said the squire to Farmer Tallington one evening.

"Ay, but it's slow work," said Tom's father. "It'll be years before that lode is cooten."

"Yes, it will be years before it is finished," said the squire, "certainly."

"Then, what's the good of us putting our money in it, eh? It'll do us no good, and be robbing our boys."

"Then why don't you leave off, father?" said Tom stoutly. "d.i.c.k Winthorpe and I don't want the fen to be drained, and we don't want to be robbed. Do we, d.i.c.k?"

The two elders laughed heartily, and the squire was silent for a few minutes before he began to speak.

"The drain's right, neighbour," he said gravely. "Perhaps you and I will reap no great benefit from it; though, if we live, we shall; but instead of leaving to our boys, when they take up our work, neighbour, either because we are called away to our rest or because we have grown old, these farms with so much good land and so much watery bog, we shall leave them acre upon acre of good solid land, that has been useless to us, but which will bear them crops and feed their beasts."

"Yes," said Farmer Tallington, "there's something in that, but--"

"Come, neighbour, look ahead. Every foot that drain comes into the fen it will lower the level, and we shall see--and before long--our farm land grow, and the water sink."

"Ye-es; but it's so like working for other people!"

"Well," said the squire laughing, "what have you been doing in that half acre of close beside your house?"

"That! Oh, only planted it with pear-trees so as to make a bit of an orchard!"

"Are you going to pick a crop of pears next year, neighbour?"

"Next year! Bah! They'll be ten years before they come well into bearing." [This was the case with the old-fas.h.i.+oned grafting.]

"So will the acres laid bare by the draining," said the squire smiling, "and I hope we shall live to see our boys eating the bread made from corn grown on that patch of water and reeds, along with the pears from your trees."

"That's a clincher," said the farmer. "You've coot the ground from under me, neighbour, and I wean't grudge the money any more."

"I wish father wouldn't say _coot_ and _wean't_!" whispered Tom, whose school teaching made some of the homely expressions and bits of dialect of the fen-land jar.

"Why not? What does it matter?" said d.i.c.k, who was busy twisting the long hairs from a sorrel nag's tail into a fis.h.i.+ng-line.

"Sounds so broad. Remember how the doctor switched Bob Robinson for saying he'd been _agate_ early."

"Yes, I recollect," said d.i.c.k, tying a knot to keep the hairs from untwisting; "and father said he ought to have been ashamed of himself, for _agate_ was good old Saxon, and so were all the words our people use down here in the fen. I say, what are they talking about now?"

"Well, for my part," said the squire rather hotly, in reply to some communication his visitor had made, "so long as I feel that I'm doing what is right, no threats shall ever stop me from going forward."

"But they seem to think it arn't right," said the farmer. "Those in the fen say it will ruin them."

"Ruin! Nonsense!" cried the squire. "They'll have plenty of good land to grow potatoes, and oats, instead of water, which produces them a precarious living from wild-fowl and fish, and ruins no end of them with rheumatism and fever."

"Yes, but--"

"But what, man? The fen-men who don't cultivate the soil are very few compared to those who do, and the case is this. The fen-land is growing about here, and good land being swallowed up by the water. Five acres of my farm, which used to be firm and dry, have in my time become water-logged and useless. Now, are the few to give way to the many, or the many to give way to the few?"

"Well, squire, the few think we ought to give way to them."

"Then we will not," said the squire hotly; "and if they don't know what's for their good, they must be taught. You know how they will stick to old things and refuse to see how they can be improved."

"Ay, it's their nature, I suppose. All I want is peace and quietness."

"And you'll have it. Let them threaten. The law is on our side. They will not dare."

"I don't know," said Farmer Tallington, scratching his head as they walked out into the home close. "You see, squire, it wean't be open enemies we shall have to fear--"

"The Winthorpes never feared their enemies since they settled in these parts in the days of King Alfred," said d.i.c.k grandly.

"Hear, hear, d.i.c.k!" cried his father, laughing.

"No more did the Tallingtons," said Tom, plucking up, so as not to be behindhand.

"Nay, Tom, my lad," said the farmer, "Tallingtons was never fighting men. Well, squire, I thought I'd warn you."

"Of course, of course, neighbour. But look here, whoever sent you that cowardly bit of scribble thought that because you lived out here in this lonely place you would be easily frightened. Look here," he continued, taking a sc.r.a.p of dirty paper out of his old pocket-book; "that bit of rubbish was stuck on one of the tines of a hay-fork, and the shaft driven into the ground in front of my door. I said nothing about it to you, but you see I've been threatened too."

He handed the paper to Farmer Tallington, who read it slowly and pa.s.sed it back.

"Same man writ both, I should say."

"So should I--a rascal!" said the squire. "Here, d.i.c.k, don't say a word to your mother; it may alarm her."

"No, father, I sha'n't say anything; but--"

"But what? Speak out."

"May I read it--and Tom?" he added, for he saw his companion's eager looks.