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Page 10
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've 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 bare-headed, 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 towards them, and his thin, long face was just as sweet
and gentle as that of the knight who carries the children in that
picture.
'They should be here now, Sir Richard,' said Puck's deep voice among the
willow-herb.
'They are here,' the knight said, and he smiled at Dan with the string
of trouts in his hand. 'There seems no great change in boys since mine
fished this water.'
'If your horse has drunk, we shall be more at ease in the Ring,' said
Puck; and he nodded to the children as though he had never magicked away
their memories a week before.
The great horse turned and hoisted himself into the pasture with a kick
and a scramble that tore the clods down rattling.
'Your pardon!' said Sir Richard to Dan. 'When these lands were mine, I
never loved that mounted men should cross the brook except by the paved
ford. But my Swallow here was thirsty, and I wished to meet you.'
'We're very glad you've come, sir,' said Dan. 'It doesn't matter in the
least about the banks.'
He trotted across the pasture on the sword side of the mighty horse, and
it was a mighty iron-handled sword that swung from Sir Richard's belt.
Una walked behind with Puck. She remembered everything now.
'I'm sorry about the Leaves,' he said, 'but it would never have done if
you had gone home and told, would it?'
'I s'pose not,' Una answered. 'But you said that all the fair--People of
the Hills had left England.'
'So they have; but I told you that you should come and go and look and
know, didn't I? The knight isn't a fairy. He's Sir Richard Dalyngridge,
a very old friend of mine. He came over with William the Conqueror, and
he wants to see you particularly.'
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