Unknown by Unknown Page B

Christianity is winning, the waters run, but when the old gods prevail, the waters disappear from the face of the earth.
    Woden and Thunor were doing particularly well that year. The nailbourne was completely dry right down to where at other times it ran into the river. Along its bed Sarah could see various places which were sometimes flooded, and even a mark on the side of a bam where the waters had reached during one particular night of flood. It wasn’t very far to the river, but it was a pretty walk and had soon become one of Sarah’s favourites. It led past a hop field where the luxuriant bines were already heavy with the golden hops and nearly ripe for picking. Their strong smell scented the surrounding countryside and had caught at Sarah’s interest, the more particularly as the house she was living in was a converted oast-house.
    The local farmer had told her that the bines are perennial, sending up new shoots every year which grow up a network of strings that are set up anew every year in the spring. The hops have to be coaxed up the strings by hand at first, a process known locally as ‘twiddling’, and then in late August the hops are picked, formerly by vast armies of women and children from the East End of London, but now more often by machine.
    The hops, when picked, are packed into ‘pokes’ and taken to the oast-houses, where they are spread out on a hair mat that covers the lattice floor of the upper storey. The ‘dryer' has charge of the oast-house, and on his experience depends that complicated process of firing the anthracite fires and adjusting the picturesque white ventilating cowls according to the wind. Once dried the hops are packed again, this time into ‘pockets’, and taken away to the breweries.
    It was hard to imagine the comfortable home that she and her father were enjoying had once been a working oast-house. Sarah had never seen one that was still in use, but she promised herself that she would one day before they too were swept away in the wake of more modem processes.
    Sarah followed the bed of the nailbourne right down to the river bank. The sun made it impossible to see into the depths of the water, but she found by squatting on the bank under a tree she could see quite well and she settled herself down without moving for a few minutes to see if she could see any fish in the river. Her own reflection peered back at her out of the water, rippled and vanished only to reappear again, joined this time by another shape, far taller than herself. She looked round, startled, to see Robert Chaddox smiling down at her.
    She stood up hastily, looking at her watch to make sure that the time hadn’t slipped by without her being aware of it. “Are—aren’t you working?” she asked him baldly. She had discovered that Robert was a solicitor, with a valuable practice in Canterbury, as well as owning most of Chaddoxbourne.
    “Not this afternoon,” he answered.
    He sat on the bank beside her, easing his back against the trunk of the tree. “It’s nice to have nothing to do for a bit,” he added.
    Sarah looked at him seriously. “It palls, after a while. Even in this beautiful weather I’m beginning to wish that I had something positive to do.”
    “Your father is looking better. Isn’t that enough?”
    “It ought to be,” she admitted. “I must be very hard to please!”
    “I doubt it. I think I’d feel much the same. Neil is the one in our family who enjoys being idle. He doesn’t start work until September and he’s revelling in this long, hot summer.”
    “He’s going to teach, isn’t he?” Sarah confirmed.
    “Heaven help us!”
    Sarah laughed. “What about the small boys he teaches?”
    “Nothing will help them!”
    Sarah laughed again. She eyed Robert covertly for a long moment in silence, wondering at her own pleasure just in having him sit beside her.
    “Mr. Chaddox, do you think there’s any work in the village which I might do?”
    His expression changed to one