“I don’t know a word of what you mean.”
“I dare say not. You foreigners never know anything like other people.”
“But won’t you tell us? Who made this flood?”
“To be sure, you weren’t meant to know this. It would not have done to show you the way out of the trap. Why—the Parliament Committee at Lincoln ordered the Snow-sewer sluice to be pulled up to-day, to drown the king’s lands, and get rid of his tenants. It will be as good as a battle gained to them.”
The children were aghast at the wickedness of this deed. They would not believe it. It would have been tyrannical and cruel to have obliged the settlers, who were not interested in a quarrel between the king of England and his people, to enlist, and be shot down in war. They would have complained of this as tyrannical and cruel. But when they were living in peace and quiet on their farms, paying their rents, and inclined to show good-will to everybody, to pull up the flood-gates, and let in the sea and the rivers to drown them because they lived in the king’s lands, was a cruelty too dreadful to be believed. Oliver and Mildred did not believe it. They were sure their father would not believe it; and that their mother, if ever she should return to her home and family, would bring a very different account—that the whole misfortune would turn out to be accidental. So they felt assured: but the fact was as Roger had said. The Snow-sewer sluice had been pulled up, by the orders of the Committee of the Parliament, then sitting at Lincoln: and it was done to destroy the king’s new lands, and deprive him of the support of his tenants. The jealous country-people round hoped also that it would prevent foreigners from coming to live in England, however much they might want such a refuge.
Some of the sufferers knew how their misfortune happened. Others might be thankful that they did not; for the thought of the malice of their enemies must have been more bitter than the fear of ruin and death.