CHAPTER XLIII.
HOW DEEPING FEN WAS DRAINED.
Ill war and disorder, ruin and death, cannot last forever. They are by
their own nature exceptional and suicidal, and spend themselves with what
they feed on. And then the true laws of God's universe, peace and order,
usefulness and life, will reassert themselves, as they have been waiting
all along to do, hid in God's presence from the strife of men.
And even so it was with Bourne.
Nearly eighty years after, in the year of Grace 1155, there might have
been seen sitting, side by side and hand in hand, upon a sunny bench on
the Bruneswald slope, in the low December sun, an old knight and an old
lady, the master and mistress of Bourne.
Much had changed since Hereward's days. The house below had been raised a
whole story. There were fresh herbs and flowers in the garden, unknown at
the time of the Conquest. But the great change was in the fen, especially
away toward Deeping on the southern horizon.
Where had been lonely meres, foul watercourses, stagnant slime, there were
now great dikes, rich and fair corn and grass lands, rows of pure white
cottages. The newly-drained land swarmed with stocks of new breeds: horses
and sheep from Flanders, cattle from Normandy; for Richard de Rulos was
the first--as far as history tells--of that noble class of agricultural
squires, who are England's blessing and England's pride.
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