Dick o the Fens | Page 5

drained."
"No," replied Tom in the same tone, "it would be a miserable place."
"Now, Tom, lad, home!" said the farmer, getting up. "Good-night, squire!"
"Nay, I won't say good-night yet," cried the squire. "Hats and sticks, Dick, and we'll walk part of the way home with them."
As they left the glowing room with its cosy fire, and opened the hall door to gaze out upon the night, the wind swept over the house and plunged into the clump of pines, which nourished and waved upon the Toft, as if it would root them up. The house was built upon a rounded knoll by the side of the embanked winding river, which ran sluggishly along the edge of the fen; and as the party looked out over the garden and across the fen upon that November night, they seemed to be ashore in the midst of a sea of desolation, which spread beneath the night sky away and away into the gloom.
From the sea, four miles distant, came a low angry roar, which seemed to rouse the wind to shout and shriek back defiance, as it plunged into the pines again, and shook and worried them till it passed on with an angry hiss.
"High-tide, and a big sea yonder," said the squire. "River must be full up. Hope she won't come over and wash us away."
"Wesh me away, you mean," said Farmer Tallington. "You're all right up on the Toft. 'Member the big flood, squire?"
"Ay, fifteen years ago, Tallington, when I came down to you in Hickathrift's duck-punt, and we fetched you and Tom's mother out of the top window."
"Ay, but it weer a bad time, and it's a good job we don't hev such floods o' watter now."
"Ay 'tis," said the squire. "My word, but the sea must bite to-night. Dick here wanted to be a sailor. Better be a farmer a night like this, eh, Tallington?"
"Deal better at home," was the reply, as the door was closed behind them, shutting out the warmth and light; and the little party went down a path leading through the clump of firs which formed a landmark for miles in the great level fen, and then down the slope on the far side, and on to the rough road which ran past Farmer Tallington's little homestead.
The two elder friends went on first, and the lads, who had been together at Lincoln Grammar-School, hung behind.
To some people a walk of two miles through the fen in the stormy darkness of the wintry night would have seemed fraught with danger, the more so that it was along no high-road, but merely a rugged track made by the horses and tumbrils in use at the Toft and at Tallington's Fen farm, Grimsey, a track often quite impassable after heavy rains. There was neither hedge nor ditch to act as guide, no hard white or drab road; nothing but old usage and instinctive habit kept those who traversed the way from going off it to right or left into the oozy fen with its black soft peat, amber-coloured bog water, and patches of bog-moss, green in summer, creamy white and pink in winter; while here and there amongst the harder portions, where heath and broom and furze, whose roots were matted with green and grey coral moss, found congenial soil, were long holes full of deep clear water--some a few yards across, others long zigzag channels like water-filled cracks in the earth, and others forming lanes and ponds and lakes that were of sizes varying from a quarter of a mile to two or three in circumference.
Woe betide the stranger who attempted the journey in the dark, the track once missed there was death threatening him on every hand; while his cries for help would have been unheard as he struggled in the deep black mire, or swam for life in the clear water to find no hold at the side but the whispering reeds, from which, with splashings and whistling of wings, the wild-fowl would rise up, to speed quacking and shrieking away.
But no thoughts of danger troubled the lads as they trudged on slowly and moodily, the deep murmur of their elders' voices being heard from the darkness far ahead.
"Wonder what old Dave said about his powder-flask?" said Tom, suddenly breaking the silence.
"Don't know and don't care," said Dick gruffly.
There was a pause.
"I should like to have been there and heard Old Hicky," said Tom, again breaking the silence.
"Yah! He'd only laugh," said Dick. "He likes a bit of fun as well as we do."
"I should have liked to see the fire fly about."
"So should I, if he'd thought it was Jacob, and given him what he calls a blob," said Dick; "but it wasn't half a bang."
"Well, I wish now we hadn't done it," said Tom.
"Why?"
"Because