traight as if ruled on paper with a straight
edge.

Then the Hayfork Minister asked me if I saw anything particular about
the water. I told him what I have just written, but I could not for
the life of me remember the word "perspective." He understood all
right, though.

"Good," he said, "and does that suggest nothing else to the bold and
inquiring mind of my friend Joseph?"

After looking awhile I answered that it seemed to me as if somebody had
cut the canal with spades just as Tim O'Hara and Mike Whelan did the
ditching and draining on my father's forage parks the winter before
last.

"Right again, Joe!" he said, pleasedlike, and rumpled up my hair in a
way I don't let anybody do--except Elsie, who does as she likes,
whether I like it or no. I pulled away my head angrily. But the
Hayfork Minister never minded.

"I can't tell you whether this has been dug out with a spade or not,"
he said, putting a point on the oaken cudgel with his big "gully" knife
(think of a minister with a knife like that!), "but this I can tell
you, that the hand of man has been here or hereabouts!"

And with that he leaned over the edge right among the weeds and began
scraping away at the bank. It was coated over pretty regularly with a
greyish mud which had come down with the last emptying of the pond.
This was done periodically, with the avowed purpose of clearing out the
Moat and Backwater. Mr. Ball saw to it, under the personal
superintendence of Mr. Stennis. And all that day the mad people at the
Grange were kept within doors, and the policies were strictly guarded.
For the scour of the water escaping down the channel brought with it
multitudes of fish--not very large, it is true, but sufficient to be a
temptation to every boy within miles. Such, however, was the terror
inspired by the inhabitants of Deep Moat Grange, and especially by Daft
Jeremy, that those who were bold enough to come at all, rather braved
the dangers of the Duke's keepers at the infall of the Backwater into
the Brom, than dared to set a foot within those woodland shadows where
they knew not what terrors might lurk.

The Hayfork Minister went on knocking off big flakes of dried mud with
the point of his stick. Then, whistling softly, he started to polish
something with vigour. At first I could not in the least see what he
was after, but soon a good big square of reddish metal was laid bare.
It was not upright in the bank, but leaned a little back, wa