A DROUGHT-TIME DIVINER 215 



hayed and the relic grass was almost as short as a lawn, 

 it took fire only less readily than the neighbouring Com 

 mon of No Man s Land, which is now a melancholy garb 

 of black &quot; in dark lieu &quot; of green and golden gorse and 

 purple heather and feathery willow herb, most of it in this 

 place truly showing the origin of its fire- weed title. The 

 sun scorched all it looked upon to a universal brown : 

 brown bents, brown fallen leaves, brown stubble, and 

 brown earth. On the Common the greenness only sur 

 vived in incidental circular scoops of ground invisible till 

 you walked over them. It looked as if just those two or 

 three inches of greater distance from the sun had made all 

 the difference, for the rest of the soft grass was like a 

 moth-eaten carpet of felt. On such a day in such an upland 

 place it was surely a good and timely act to bore a well. 

 The well-borer at any rate thought so when he put a 

 hazel twig into my hand. Like most well-borers, and in 

 these days most architects, he is a devout believer in &quot; the 

 rod,&quot; though he says ingenuously enough that geology 

 is a great help to the diviner. He had brought three 

 hazel forks with him, each prettily cut, as is necessary, 

 and he was anxious to impart his art and especially to 

 demonstrate the right grip. For himself his thumbs, he 

 said, were &quot; made for the job/ 9 They bend back natur 

 ally in a seductive curve that simplifies the rather com 

 plicated position of the hands grasping the two forks of 

 the rod. Happily folk with less specially adapted thumbs 

 could achieve the same grip if uncomfortably, and pres 

 ently the hazel forks were properly lodged in our pren 

 tice hands, one thumb pointing North, one South, the 

 palms upwards, elbows into the side. Within about 

 30 seconds the top of my rod where the forks join began 

 to lift, like the head of a cock before it crows. I could 

 feel the strain on the skin of hands and thumbs, and was 



