as the two met here, and not be mutually
obscurants.

They stepped ashore in turn on the same small shoot of land where a
farm-house near a chapel in the shadow of cliffs did occasional service
for an inn. Each had intended to pass a day and a night in this lonely
dwelling-place by the lake, but a rival was less to be tolerated there
than in love, and each awaited the other's departure, with an air that
said: 'You are in my sunlight'; and going deeper, more sternly: 'Sir,
you are an offence to Nature's pudency!'

Woodseer was the more placable of the two; he had taken possession of
the bench outside, and he had his note-book and much profundity to haul
up with it while fish were frying. His countryman had rushed inside
to avoid him, and remained there pacing the chamber like a lion newly
caged. Their boatmen were brotherly in the anticipation of provision and
payment.

After eating his fish, Woodseer decided abruptly, that as he could not
have the spot to himself, memorable as it would have been to intermarry
with Nature in so sacred a welldepth of the mountains, he had better be
walking and climbing. Another boat paddling up the lake had been spied:
solitude was not merely shared with a rival, but violated by numbers.
In the first case, we detest the man; in the second, we fly from an
outraged scene. He wrote a line or so in his book, hurriedly paid his
bill, and started, full of the matter he had briefly committed to his
pages.

At noon, sitting beside the beck that runs from the lake, he was
overtaken by the gentleman he had left behind, and accosted in the
informal English style, with all the politeness possible to a nervously
blunt manner: 'This book is yours,--I have no doubt it is yours; I am
glad to be able to restore it; I should be glad to be the owner-writer
of the contents, I mean. I have to beg your excuse; I found it lying
open; I looked at the page, I looked through the whole; I am quite at
your mercy.'

Woodseer jumped at the sight of his note-book, felt for the emptiness
of his pocket, and replied: 'Thank you, thank you. It's of use to me,
though to no one else.'

'You pardon me?'

'Certainly. I should have done it myself.'

'I cannot offer you my apologies as a stranger.' Lord Fleetwood was the
name given.

Woodseer's plebeian was exchanged for it, and he stood up.

The young lord had fair, straight, thin features, with large restless
eyes that lighted quickly, and a mouth that was winni