ancestor, old yeoman Caresfoot, bought this place and came to live
here, in a year when there was a great black frost that set the waters
of the lake like one of the new-fangled roads, he asked his
neighbours, ay, and his labouring folk, to come and dine with him and
drink to the success of his purchase. It was a proud day for him, and
when dinner was done and they were all mellow with strong ale, he bade
them step down to the borders of the lake, as he would have them be
witness to a ceremony. When they reached the spot they saw a curious
sight, for there on a strong dray, and dragged by Farmer Caresfoot's
six best horses, was an oak of fifty years' growth coming across the
ice, earth, roots and all.

"On that spot where it now stands there had been a great hole, ten
feet deep by fourteen feet square, dug to receive it, and into that
hole Caresfoot Staff was tilted and levered off the dray. And when it
had been planted, and the frozen earth well trodden in, your
grandfather in the ninth degree brought his guests back to the old
banqueting-hall, and made a speech which, as it was the first and last
he ever made, was long remembered in the country-side. It was, put
into modern English, something like this:

"'Neighbours,--Prior's Oak has gone into the water, and folks said
that it was for a sign that the monks would never come back to
Bratham, and that it was the Lord's wind that put it there. And,
neighbours, as ye know, the broad Bratham lands and the fat marshes
down by the brook passed by king's grant to a man that knew not clay
from loam, or layer from pasturage, and from him they passed by the
Lord's will to me, as I have asked you here to-day to celebrate. And
now, neighbours, I have a mind, and though it seem to you but a
childish thing, yet I have a mind, and have set myself to fulfil it.