WATERS OF YOUTH 15 



meditation has suggested that when the mill situate 

 in the ancient Priory buildings started of a morning 

 then did the water flow ; when the mill stopped at the 

 dinner-hour, then did the water ebb. The movement 

 of the waters was repeated when the mill started again 

 in the afternoon and when it stopped in the evening. 

 If the monks devised this scheme of letting fresh water 

 into the pond without turning the brook through it, they 

 accomplished a very pretty piece of water engineering, 

 and calculated levels with good skill in the mathematics. 

 The arrangement was doubtless helped by the fact that 

 another mill dammed the brook a hundred yards below, 

 and was worked but seldom. Indeed, the streamlet 

 scarce afforded power for two mills within three 

 hundred yards of one another. 



Besides making the pond, the monks, it is to be 

 presumed, put in the carp also, in spite of the old 

 legend which makes the bronze fish but a late-comer 

 to these shores. And, having put those carp in, they 

 could not catch them ; or, possibly, they did catch 

 one, and so filled the others with caution. Certain it 

 was that never had a carp been taken since, at any 

 rate by fair angling. There are, it is said, carp that 

 will bite at honey paste, at little new potatoes, at 

 green-peas, and even at garden worms. But those 

 of the Priory Pond would not bite at anything. The 

 fish were extremely fat almost round and they rolled 

 about beneath my very feet, much, of course, to my 

 excitement, since I had never dreamed of monsters in 

 such profusion, much less seen them. It happened 

 that I had lately read instructions for carp-catching 

 in The Boy's Own Paper, I think so I set about the 



