For I never could find one, an' I've lain awake at nights puzzlin' it over." "I bet Bill would know," said Tilda.
Sam eyed her.
"I'd give somethin'" he said, "to be sure this Bill, as you make such a gawd of, is a real person--or whether, bein' born different to the rest of yer sex, you've 'ad to invent 'im." Many locks encumber the descending levels of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, and they kept Sam busy.

In the intervals the boat glided deeper and deeper into a green pastoral country, parcelled out with hedgerows and lines of elms, behind which here and there lay a village half hidden--a grey tower and a few red-tiled roofs visible between the trees.

Cattle dotted the near pastures, till away behind the trees--for summer had passed into late September--the children heard now and again the guns of partridge shooters cracking from fields of stubble.

But no human folk frequented the banks of the canal, which wound its way past scented meadows edged with willow-herb, late meadow-sweet, yellow tansy and purple loosestrife, this last showing a blood-red stalk as its bloom died away.

Out beyond, green arrowheads floated on the water; the Success to Commerce ploughed through beds of them, and they rose from under her keel and spread themselves again in her wake.