Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
  Or he would call it a sin;
But—­we have been out in the woods all night,
  A-conjuring Summer in! 
And we bring you news by word of mouth—­
  Good news for cattle and corn—­
Now is the Sun come up from the South,
  With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good Sirs
  (All of a Midsummer morn)! 
England shall bide till Judgement Tide,
  By Oak and Ash and Thorn!

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.