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Here and there is a pavilion by the water in which poet or sage sits contemplating the beauty round him. These happy and romantic scenes yield at last to promontory and reed-bed on the borders of a bay where a fisherman's boat is rocking on the swell.
By one rapid practice-learned drag, the net was snatched over and fell on to the water, while a great flock of green plovers took flight in alarm and went flapping over reed-bed and mere. "Oh, what a pity!" cried Dick, jumping up in the boat and stamping his foot with rage. "And so near, too!" cried Tom.
An object of ceaseless curiosity to Brighteye was a water-shrew, not more than half the size of the vole, that had come to dwell in the pool, and had tunnelled out a burrow in the bank above the reed-bed.
"I joost caught a blink of 'em as they went off, and I let 'em hev the whole charge o' my goon." "A bullet?" said Tom huskily. "Nay, lad; swan-shot. I'd been out after the wild-geese at the end of the bit o' reed-bed here, when I see a light wheer there couldn't be no light, and I roon back and see what they'd done, and let fly at 'em." "And hit them, Dave?" said Dick. "Nay, lad, I can't say.
At length the rim of the full moon appeared above the crest of the hill behind the village, and gradually, as the orb ascended, the night became brighter, till the whole surface of the pool, except for a fleeting shadow, was clear and white, and a broad silver bar lay across the ripples between me and the reed-bed on the further side.
Presently, I saw a hare emerge from the gorse and come along the path towards me. At the exact spot indicated by the poacher, she paused, and then with a single bound cleared the wide space between herself and the hedge. With another bound she landed on the marsh beyond, where she splattered away through the shallow water till a dry reed-bed was reached on a slight elevation in the marsh.
"Ay, mester, and I suppose you are going to spoil it all with your big drain," said the wheelwright, and he ceased poling for a few moments, as the punt entered a natural canal through a reed-bed. "Spoil it, my man! No. Only change its aspect. It will be as beautiful in its way when corn is growing upon it, and far more useful." "Ay, bud that's what our people don't think. Look, Mester Dick!"
Nothing more happened after that till the sun at length shone on the little harbour town at the estuary mouth, making the masts of fishing craft clustering there like a golden reed-bed against the cool, clean blue of the sea beyond.
Dick started up and ran in the same direction as Dave had taken with the punt before he disappeared behind the reed-bed. Tom followed, and they raced on along the edge till a clump of alders was reached. "Pst!
And going to the front of the boat, the wheelwright good-humouredly gave way for him, with the result that the lad vigorously propelled the craft for the space of about ten minutes, ending by driving it right into a reed-bed and stopping short. "Oh, I say, here's a muddle!" he cried. "You can't see where you are going in the least." "Shall I try?" said Mr Marston.
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