For the Tees is a violent water sometimes, and the safest way to cross it is to go on till you come to a good stone bridge.
Now forty years after that sad destruction of brave but not well-guided men, and thirty years after the chain was fixed, that their sons might not go after them, another thing happened at "Seven Corpse Ford," worse than the drowning of the farmers.

Or, at any rate, it made more stir (which is of wider spread than sorrow), because of the eminence of the man, and the length and width of his property.

Neither could any one at first believe in so quiet an end to so turbulent a course.

Nevertheless it came to pass, as lightly as if he were a reed or a bubble of the river that belonged to him.
It was upon a gentle evening, a few days after Michaelmas of 1777.

No flood was in the river then, and no fog on the moor-land, only the usual course of time, keeping the silent company of stars.