And then Hound's Pool would be
like to rise over its banks and drown the woodman's path that ran beside
it and throw up sedges and dead grasses upon the lowermost boughs of the
overhanging thicket to show where it could reach sometimes.
'Twas haunted, and old folk--John Meadows among 'em--stoutly maintained
that nothing short of Doomsday would lay the spectrum, because they knew
the ancient tale of Weaver Knowles, and believed in it also; but the
legend had gone out of fashion, as old stories will, and it came as a new
and strange thing to the rising generation. 'Tis any odds the young men
and maidens would never have believed in it; but by chance it happed to be
a young man who revived the story, and as he'd seen with his own eyes, he
couldn't doubt. William Parsloe he was, under-keeper at Dean, and he told
what he'd seen to John Meadows, the head-keeper; but it weren't till he
heard old John on the subject that he knew as he'd beheld something out of
another world than his own.
The two men met where a right of way ran through the preserves--a sore
trial to the keepers and the owners also, but sacred under the law--and
Harry Wade, the returned native, as had just come back to his birthplace,
was walking along with Parsloe at the time.
The keepers were a good bit fretted and on their mettle just then, because
there was a lot of poaching afoot and pheasants going, and a dead bird or
two picked up, as had escaped the malefactors, but died after and been
found.
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