Oh, delicious were these woods!  In the river there were islands, which were covered in summer with the greenest grass, and the freshest of willows, and the clear waters rushed around them in the most inviting manner imaginable.  And there were numbers of people extremely ready to accept this delectable invitation of these waters.  There they came in fine weather, and as these islands were only separated from the main-land by a little and very shallow stream, it was delightful for lovers to get across—­with laughter, and treading on stepping-stones, and slipping off the stepping-stones up to the ankles into the cool brook, and pretty screams, and fresh laughter, and then landing on those sunny, and to them really enchanted islands.  And then came fishermen; solitary fishermen, and fishermen in rows; fishermen lying in the flowery grass, with fragrant meadow-sweet and honey-breathing clover all about their ears; and fishermen standing in file, as if they were determined to clear all the river of fish in one day.  And there were other lovers, and troops of loiterers, and shouting roysterers, going along under the boughs of the wood, and following the turns of that most companionable of rivers.  And there were boats going up and down; boats full of young people, all holiday finery and mirth, and boats with duck-hunters, and other, to Sir Roger, detestable marauders, with guns and dogs, and great bottles of beer.  In the fine grove, on summer days, there might be found hundreds of people.  There were picnic parties, fathers and mothers with whole families of children, and a great promenade of the delighted artisans and their wives or sweethearts.

In the times prior to the sudden growth of the neighboring town, Great Stockington, and to the simultaneous development of the love-of-nature principle in the Stockingtonians, nothing had been thought of all these roads.  The roads were well enough till they led to these inroads.  Then Sir Roger aroused himself.  This must be changed.  The roads must be stopped.  Nothing was easier to his fancy.  His fellow-justices, Sir Benjamin Bullockshed and Squire Sheepshank, had asked his aid to stop the like nuisances, and it had been done at once.  So Sir Roger put up notices all about, that the roads were to be stopped by an Order of Sessions, and these notices were signed, as required by law, by their worships of Bullockshed and Sheepshank.  But Sir Roger soon found that it was one thing to stop a road leading from Oneman-Town to Lonely-Lodge, and another to attempt to stop those from Great-Stockington to Rockville.

On the very first Sunday after the exhibition of those notice-boards, there was a ferment in the grove of Rockville, as if all the bees in the county were swarming there, with all the wasps and hornets to boot.  Great crowds were collected before each of these obnoxious placards, and the amount of curses vomited against them was really shocking for any day, but more especially for a Sunday.  Presently there was a rush at them; they were torn down, and simultaneously pitched into the river.  There were great crowds swarming all about Rockville all that day, and with looks so defiant that Sir Roger more than once contemplated sending off for the Yeoman Cavalry to defend his house, which he seriously thought in danger.