CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE DRAIN PROGRESSES.
The number of workers increased at the sea-bank, quite a colony growing up, and Dick paid several visits to the place with his father to see how busily the men were delving, while others built up what was termed a _gowt_--a flood-gate arrangement for keeping out the sea at high water, and opening it at low, so as to give egress to the drain-water collected from the fen-land.
Both lads were eager enough to be there to witness the progress of the works at first; but after going again and again, they voted the whole thing to be uninteresting, and no more worth seeing than the digging of one of the ditches on the farms at home.
And certainly there was no more difference than in the fact that the ditches at home were five or six feet wide, while the one the adventurers were having cut through the fen-land would be forty feet, and proportionately deep.
So the big drain progressed foot by foot, creeping on as it were from the sea-shore, an innocent-looking channel that seemed valueless, but which would, when finished, rid the land of its stagnant water, and turn the boggy, peaty soil of the fen into rich pasture and corn-land, whereas its finest produce now was wild-fowl and a harvest of reeds.
"We're getting on, neighbour," said the squire to Farmer Tallington one evening.
"Ay, but it's slow work," said Tom's father.

"It'll be years before that lode is cooten." "Yes, it will be years before it is finished," said the squire, "certainly." "Then, what's the good of us putting our money in it, eh?
It'll do us no good, and be robbing our boys." "Then why don't you leave off, father ?" said Tom stoutly.

"Dick Winthorpe and I don't want the fen to be drained, and we don't want to be robbed.

Do we, Dick ?" The two elders laughed heartily, and the squire was silent for a few minutes before he began to speak.
"The drain's right, neighbour," he said gravely.

"Perhaps you and I will reap no great benefit from it; though, if we live, we shall; but instead of leaving to our boys, when they take up our work, neighbour, either because we are called away to our rest or because we have grown old, these farms with so much good land and so much watery bog, we shall leave them acre upon acre of good solid land, that has been useless to us, but which will bear them crops and feed their beasts." "Yes," said Farmer Tallington, "there's something in that, but--" "Come, neighbour, look ahead.