As for me, I would rather have gone on mending mills, with my crust of bread and liberty.' Almost automatically they had bent their steps along the margin of the river; they now paused.

They were standing on the brink of the well-known weir.

There were the hatches, there was the culvert; they could see the pebbly bed of the stream through the pellucid water.

The notes of the church-bells were audible, still jangled by the enthusiastic villagers.
'Why see--it was there I hid his walking-stick!' said Joshua, looking towards the sedge.

The next moment, during a passing breeze, something flashed white on the spot to which the attention of Cornelius was drawn.
From the sedge rose a straight little silver-poplar, and it was the leaves of this sapling which caused the flicker of whiteness.
'His walking-stick has grown!' Joshua added.