Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/65

 days afterwards there were a score of snakes covering the surface; little crawling rivers that moved on the river but did not mix with it, being as alien as witch's oils. Later there came darker liquids with no pretensions to beauty, black and brown flakes of grease that floated heavily.

It was highly characteristic of Hood that to the last he was rather hazy about the nature and purpose of the factory; and therefore about the ingredients of the chemicals that were flowing into the river; beyond the fact that they were mostly of the oily sort and floated on the water in flakes and lumps, and that something resembling petrol seemed to predominate, used perhaps rather for power than raw material. He had heard a rustic rumour that the enterprise was devoted to hair-dye. It smelt rather like a soap factory. So far as he ever understood it, he gathered that it was devoted to what might be considered as a golden mean between hair—dye and soap, some kind of new and highly hygienic cosmetics. There had been a yet more feverish fashion in these things, since Professor Hake had written his great book proving that cosmetics were of all things the most hygienic. And Hood had seen many of the meadows of his childhood now brightened and adorned by large notices inscribed "Why Grow Old? "with the portrait