“Nay, I won’t say good-night yet,” cried the squire. “Hats and sticks, Dick, and we’ll walk part of the way home with them.”
As they left the glowing room with its cosy fire, and opened the hall door to gaze out upon the night, the wind swept over the house and plunged into the clump of pines, which nourished and waved upon the Toft, as if it would root them up. The house was built upon a rounded knoll by the side of the embanked winding river, which ran sluggishly along the edge of the fen; and as the party looked out over the garden and across the fen upon that November night, they seemed to be ashore in the midst of a sea of desolation, which spread beneath the night sky away and away into the gloom.
From the sea, four miles distant, came a low angry roar, which seemed to rouse the wind to shout and shriek back defiance, as it plunged into the pines again, and shook and worried them till it passed on with an angry hiss.
“High-tide, and a big sea yonder,” said the squire. “River must be full up. Hope she won’t come over and wash us away.”
“Wesh me away, you mean,” said Farmer Tallington. “You’re all right up on the Toft. ’Member the big flood, squire?”
“Ay, fifteen years ago, Tallington, when I came down to you in Hickathrift’s duck-punt, and we fetched you and Tom’s mother out of the top window.”
“Ay, but it weer a bad time, and it’s a good job we don’t hev such floods o’ watter now.”
“Ay ’tis,” said the squire. “My word, but the sea must bite to-night. Dick here wanted to be a sailor. Better be a farmer a night like this, eh, Tallington?”
“Deal better at home,” was the reply, as the door was closed behind them, shutting out the warmth and light; and the little party went down a path leading through the clump of firs which formed a landmark for miles in the great level fen, and then down the slope on the far side, and on to the rough road which ran past Farmer Tallington’s little homestead.
The two elder friends went on first, and the lads, who had been together at Lincoln Grammar-School, hung behind.