Dimmity on meadow and water, the eve-star shining over the hill, and Old Nog the heron crying _kra-a-ark!_ as his slow dark wings carried him down to the estuary. A whiteness drifting above the sere reeds of the riverside, for the owl had flown from under the middle arch of the stone bridge that once had carried the canal across the river. Below Canal Bridge, on the right bank, grew twelve great trees, with roots awash. Thirteen had stood there--eleven oaks and two ash trees--but the oak nearest the North Star had never thriven, since first a pale green hook had pushed out of a swelled black acorn left by floods on the bank more than three centuries before. In its second year a bullock's ho…
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