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      Chapter 1

       The People of Nethermere

       Table of Contents

      I stood watching the shadowy fish slide through the gloom of the millpond. They were grey, descendants of the silvery things that had darted away from the monks, in the young days when the valley was lusty. The whole place was gathered in the musing of old age. The thick-piled trees on the far shore were too dark and sober to dally with the sun; the weeds stood crowded and motionless. Not even a little wind flickered the willows of the islets. The water lay softly, intensely still. Only the thin stream falling through the millrace murmured to itself of the tumult of life which had once quickened the valley.

      I was almost startled into the water from my perch on the alder roots by a voice saying:

      “Well, what is there to look at?” My friend was a young farmer, stoutly built, brown-eyed, with a naturally fair skin burned dark and freckled in patches. He laughed, seeing me start, and looked down at me with lazy curiosity.

      “I was thinking the place seemed old, brooding over its past.” He looked at me with a lazy indulgent smile, and lay down on his back on the bank, saying:

      “It’s all right for a doss — here.”

      “Your life is nothing else but a doss. I shall laugh when somebody jerks you awake,” I replied.

      He smiled comfortably and put his hands over his eyes because of the light.

      “Why shall you laugh?” he drawled.

      “Because you’ll be amusing,” said I.

      We were silent for a long time, when he rolled over and began to poke with his finger in the bank.

      “I thought,” he said in