He is Lord of the Last—
The Fifth, most wonderful, Flood.
He hears Her thunder past
And Her song is in his blood.
He can foresay: ‘She will fall,’
For he knows which fountain dries
Behind which desert-belt
A thousand leagues to the South.
He can foresay: ‘She will rise.’
He knows what far snows melt;
Along what mountain-wall
A thousand leagues to the North.
He snuffs the coming drought
As he snuffs the coming rain,
He knows what each will bring forth,
And turns it to his gain.
A Prince without a Sword,
A Ruler without a Throne;
Israel follows his quest.
In every land a guest,
Of many lands a lord,
In no land King is he.
But the Fifth Great River keeps
The secret of Her deeps
For Israel alone,
As it was ordered to be.
Now it was the third week in November, and the woods
rang with the noise of pheasant-shooting. No
one hunted that steep, cramped country except the
village beagles, who, as often as not, escaped from
their kennels and made a day of their own. Dan
and Una found a couple of them towling round the kitchen-garden
after the laundry cat. The little brutes were
only too pleased to go rabbiting, so the children ran
them all along the brook pastures and into Little
Lindens farm-yard, where the old sow vanquished them—and
up to the quarry-hole, where they started a fox.
He headed for Far Wood, and there they frightened
out all the pheasants, who were sheltering from a
big beat across the valley. Then the cruel guns
began again, and they grabbed the beagles lest they
should stray and get hurt.
‘I wouldn’t be a pheasant—in
November—for a lot,’ Dan panted, as
he caught Folly by the neck. ‘Why
did you laugh that horrid way?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Una, sitting on
Flora, the fat lady-dog. ’Oh, look!
The silly birds are going back to their own woods instead
of ours, where they would be safe.’
‘Safe till it pleased you to kill them.’
An old man, so tall he was almost a giant, stepped
from behind the clump of hollies by Volaterrae.
The children jumped, and the dogs dropped like setters.
He wore a sweeping gown of dark thick stuff, lined
and edged with yellowish fur, and he bowed a bent-down
bow that made them feel both proud and ashamed.
Then he looked at them steadily, and they stared back
without doubt or fear.
‘You are not afraid?’ he said, running
his hands through his splendid grey beard. ’Not
afraid that those men yonder’—he jerked
his head towards the incessant pop-pop of the guns
from the lower woods—’will do you
hurt?’
’We-ell’—Dan liked to be accurate,
especially when he was shy—’old Hobd—a
friend of mine told me that one of the beaters got
peppered last week—hit in the leg, I mean.
You see, Mr Meyer will fire at rabbits.
But he gave Waxy Garnett a quid—sovereign,
I mean—and Waxy told Hobden he’d
have stood both barrels for half the money.’
