into the eddies
and backwaters, driven down a good deal here and there; but their
natural habit is to make their way higher and higher up to the shallows
in search of food. There, Mr Manners, I don't think that you'll miss
any of your sport. My experience is that places which swarm with trout
one day are empty the next, and vacant spots where you have thrown a fly
in vain will another time give you a fish at nearly every cast."

"Well," said Manners, "as I have had my fright for nothing, my nature's
beginning to assert itself, and the main question now with me is
breakfast. Now, boys, will you come and join me? I can't smell them,
but I can almost venture to say for certain that Mrs Drinkwater is
frying trout. What do you say?"

"No, thank you, Mr Manners," replied Will; "my father will want me,
perhaps, to give orders to the men; but Josh has got to pass the
cottage."

"Of course," cried Manners; "and you might honour me too, Mr Carlile."

"Thanks, no," said the Vicar. "Josh can stay, and he will be glad.
I'll go on, for they would be waiting breakfast at home."

The artist gave a tug at a thick chain, and dragged out a heavy,
old-fashioned, gold watch.

"Five o'clock," he cried. "We should be done by six. Why, you'd be
quite ready for a second breakfast, sir, by eight or nine."

"Do come, father."

"Very well," said the Vicar, smiling; and the artist carried them off,
leaving Willows with his son to walk slowly on to the broad dam where
the foam-covered water brimmed the stones, as if only wanting the
impulse of a puff of wind to sweep over the top.

They stopped about the middle, to stand looking up the vale.

"I say, father, do you feel that?" cried Will.

"What?--the quivering sensation, my boy?"

"Yes; it is just as if the water was shaking the stones all loose."

"Yes, but it is only the vibration caused by the water rushing through
the open sluices on either side; they are open as wide as they will go,
and have just been large enough to do their work well and keep the flood
down. I fully expected to find it foaming over the top. What are you
looking at?"

"Don't take any notice, father. I'm going to look away. Just turn your
eyes quietly up to the old stone bench on the top there by the lookout."

There was a pause of a moment or two, during which the mill-owner
stooped to pick up a piece of sodden, dead wood, to throw it outward
into the current tearing through one of the open slui