372 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



understand the silent tragedies that have taken place 

 under these silent, inscrutable waters the moles that 

 have been drowned without the least chance of escape, 

 the rabbits surrounded and baffled, mice in the hedge- 

 rows that are now but lines of twigs in a muddy 

 lake ? The attack is not always frontal. The enemy 

 gets silently behind, embracing a doomed field with 

 long arms, then closing on its helpless inhabitants. 



Differences of level were so slight before the water 

 revealed them that we shall never get rid of the habit 

 of speaking of the treachery of these inundations. 

 A path that we should have said was level now dips 

 into the flood as though the very earth had turned 

 traitor. A lawn that, in the beguiling language of 

 the estate agent, lately " sloped to the river," now 

 slopes right under it. Its boundary is just retained 

 in the shape of the tips of a privet-hedge struggling 

 in the current. Just below the flower-beds a garden- 

 seat stands a foot deep in the water. The picture is 

 not so ironical as when the last great flood swallowed 

 up a June garden, bringing the muddy face of revolu- 

 tion up to the roots of geraniums and carnations and 

 decorating the brown scum with blown rose petals. 

 One house stands with its front door a foot deep in 

 the water. The poor rose trees stand in it like sheaves 

 of rushes, and winter jasmine, covered with yellow 

 blossom, clings to the house-wall, and looks down 

 askance. There is box edging next the gravel path 

 (seen with the eye of faith), which edging, the 

 gardener, no doubt, flattered himself was as straight 

 as a die. But the water, judging everything with 

 cruellest impartiality, declares it to be tilted like a 

 roof. And it denounces the fallacy of the rock 



