Ch. 2: 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.'