‘Ah, that’s but the edge.  Back behind of her there’s steeples settin’ beside churches, an’ wise women settin’ beside their doors, an’ the sea settin’ above the land, an’ ducks herdin’ wild in the diks’ (he meant ditches).  ‘The Marsh is justabout riddled with diks an’ sluices, an’ tide-gates an’ water-lets.  You can hear ’em bubblin’ an’ grummelin’ when the tide works in ’em, an’ then you hear the sea rangin’ left and right-handed all up along the Wall.  You’ve seen how flat she is—­the Marsh?  You’d think nothin’ easier than to walk eend-on acrost her?  Ah, but the diks an’ the water-lets, they twists the roads about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles.  So ye get all turned round in broad daylight.’

‘That’s because they’ve dreened the waters into the diks,’ said Hobden.  ’When I courted my woman the rushes was green—­Eh me! the rushes was green—­an’ the Bailiff o’ the Marshes he rode up and down as free as the fog.’

‘Who was he?’ said Dan.

‘Why, the Marsh fever an’ ague.  He’ve clapped me on the shoulder once or twice till I shook proper.  But now the dreenin’ off of the waters have done away with the fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the Bailiff o’ the Marshes broke his neck in a dik.  A won’erful place for bees an’ ducks ‘tis too.’

‘An’ old,’ Tom went on.  ‘Flesh an’ Blood have been there since Time Everlastin’ Beyond.  Well, now, speakin’ among themselves, the Marsh men say that from Time Everlastin’ Beyond, the Pharisees favoured the Marsh above the rest of Old England.  I lay the Marsh men ought to know.  They’ve been out after dark, father an’ son, smugglin’ some one thing or t’other, since ever wool grew to sheep’s backs.  They say there was always a middlin’ few Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh.  Impident as rabbits, they was.  They’d dance on the nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they’d flash their liddle green lights along the diks, comin’ an’ goin’, like honest smugglers.  Yes, an’ times they’d lock the church doors against parson an’ clerk of Sundays.’

’That ‘ud be smugglers layin’ in the lace or the brandy till they could run it out o’ the Marsh.  I’ve told my woman so,’ said Hobden.

’I’ll lay she didn’t belieft it, then—­not if she was a Whitgift.  A won’erful choice place for Pharisees, the Marsh, by all accounts, till Queen Bess’s father he come in with his Reformatories.’

‘Would that be a Act of Parliament like?’ Hobden asked.

‘Sure-ly.  Can’t do nothing in Old England without Act, Warrant an’ Summons.  He got his Act allowed him, an’, they say, Queen Bess’s father he used the parish churches something shameful.  Justabout tore the gizzards out of I dunnamany.  Some folk in England they held with ’en; but some they saw it different, an’ it eended in ’em takin’ sides an’ burnin’ each other no bounds, accordin’ which side was top, time bein’.  That tarrified the Pharisees:  for Goodwill among Flesh an’ Blood is meat an’ drink to ’em, an’ ill-will is poison.’