"Eh? Why, fishing, to be sure. What else?" stammered the corporal,
taken aback.

"Tut!" said the old man curtly. "Here she comes. Now, what are you going
to do?"

Without waiting for an answer, he bent his gaze on the float again, and
kept it fastened there, as a pretty shop-girl came strolling along the
river path. She had taken off her hat, of broad-brimmed straw with
artificial poppies and cornflowers, and swung it in her hand as she came.
Her eyes roamed the landscape carelessly, avoiding only that particular
spot where the corporal, as she approached, scrambled to his feet; then,
her start of surprise was admirable.

"Oh, it's _you!_ Good-evening."

"Good-evening, miss."

"Why, whoever--! It seems to me you spend most of your time fishing."

She paused, gathering in her skirt a little--and this obviously was the
cue for a gallant soldier. The corporal began, indeed, to wind up his
line, but with a foolish grin and a glance at Rosewarne's back.

"It keeps beautiful weather," he answered at length.

"_I_ call it sultry." She held out her hat with a little deprecating
laugh. "I took it off for the sake of fresh air," she explained. Then, as
he stood stock-still, a flush crept up her cheek to her pretty forehead.

"Well, good-evening; I won't interrupt you by talking," she said, and
began to move away.

Come to think of it, it _do_ look like thunder, "the corporal remarked to
Rosewarne, staring after her and then up at the sky.

"If you had eyes in your head, you'd have seen that without her telling
you. That cloud yonder has been rising against the wind for an hour.
Look you along the bank, how every man Jack is unjointing his rod and
making for home. Go, and leave me in peace!"

He did not turn his head even when the corporal, having packed together
his gear, wished him good-night and hurried after the print frock as it
vanished in the twilit shadows. One or two of the departing anglers
paused as they went by to promise him that a storm was imminent and the
fish had ceased feeding. He thanked them, yet sat on--solitary, in the
leaden dusk.

The scene he had just witnessed--how it called up the irremediable past,
with all the memories which had drawn him hither, summer after summer!
And yet how common it was and minutely unimportant! Nightly by the banks
of Avon couples had been courting--thousands in these thirty-five years--
each of them dreaming, poor fools, that their moment's passion