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CHAPTER II--IN THE FEN
It was near six in the May morning when Dick began to ride down into the
fen upon his homeward way. The sky was all blue; the jolly wind blew
loud and steady; the windmill-sails were spinning; and the willows over
all the fen rippling and whitening like a field of corn. He had been all
night in the saddle, but his heart was good and his body sound, and he
rode right merrily.
The path went down and down into the marsh, till he lost sight of all the
neighbouring landmarks but Kettley windmill on the knoll behind him, and
the extreme top of Tunstall Forest far before. On either hand there were
great fields of blowing reeds and willows, pools of water shaking in the
wind, and treacherous bogs, as green as emerald, to tempt and to betray
the traveller. The path lay almost straight through the morass. It was
already very ancient; its foundation had been laid by Roman soldiery; in
the lapse of ages much of it had sunk, and every here and there, for a
few hundred yards, it lay submerged below the stagnant waters of the fen.
About a mile from Kettley, Dick came to one such break in the plain line
of causeway, where the reeds and willows grew dispersedly like little
islands and confused the eye. The gap, besides, was more than usually
long; it was a place where any stranger might come readily to mischief;
and Dick bethought him, with something like a pang, of the lad whom he
had so imperfectly directed. As for himself, one look backward to where
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