Friendly Brook
(March 1914)
The valley was so choked with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week's November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and she proclaimed it aloud.
Two men in sackcloth aprons were considering an untrimmed hedge that ran down the hillside and disappeared into mist beside those roarings. They stood back and took stock of the neglected growth, tapped an elbow of hedge-oak here, a mossed beech-stub there, swayed a stooled ash back and forth, and looked at each other.
'I reckon she's about two rod thick,' said Jabez the younger, 'an' she hasn't felt iron since—when has she, Jesse?'
'Call it twenty-five year, Jabez, an' you won't be far out.'
'Umm!' Jabez rubbed his wet handbill on
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