ay,--he might be little
good at pretending, but in grappling with the stern facts of life he
had no equal. Enjoining silence, he waited till we were but a little
way from the fated landing-place, and then brought us in to the
opposite bank. We scrambled out noiselessly, and--the gathering darkness
favouring us--crouched behind a willow, while Edward pushed off the
empty boat with his foot. The old Argo, borne down by the gentle
current, slid and grazed along the rushy bank; and when she came
opposite the suspected ambush, a stream of imprecation told us that
our precaution had not been wasted. We wondered, as we listened, where
Farmer Larkin, who was bucolically bred and reared, had acquired such
range and wealth of vocabulary. Fully realising at last that his boat
was derelict, abandoned, at the mercy of wind and wave,--as well as out
of his reach,--he strode away to the bridge, about a quarter of a mile
further down; and as soon as we heard his boots clumping on the planks,
we nipped out, recovered the craft, pulled across, and made the faithful
vessel fast to her proper moorings. Edward was anxious to wait and
exchange courtesies and compliments with the disappointed farmer,
when he should confront us on the opposite bank; but wiser counsels
prevailed. It was possible that the piracy was not yet laid at our
particular door: Ulysses, I reminded him, had reason to regret a similar
act of bravado, and--were he here--would certainly advise a timely
retreat. Edward held but a low opinion of me as a counsellor; but he had
a very solid respect for Ulysses.

THE ROMAN ROAD

ALL the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful and friendly, having
each of them pleasant qualities of their own; but this one seemed
different from the others in its masterful suggestion of a serious
purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart. The
others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt
surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse,
splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you
through gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did you choose one
of them,--so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from
this side and that. But this other was of a sterner sort, and even in
its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full
for the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for adventitious
trappings to catch t