was with Lord Castlemallard since yesterday
evening, on business, and don't you say anything else; keep her quiet,
do ye mind, and humour her.'

And away went Toole, at a swift pace, to the town again, and entered the
barrack, and asked to see the adjutant, and then to look at the hat the
corporal had fished up by 'Bloody Bridge;' and, by Jupiter! his heart
gave a couple of great bounces, and he felt himself grow pale--they were
the identical capitals, C N, and the clumsy red silk stitching in the
lining.

Toole was off forthwith, and had a fellow dragging the river before
three-quarters of an hour.

Dr. Walsingham, returning from an early ride to Island Bridge, saw this
artist at work, with his ropes and great hooks, at the other side of the
river; and being a man of enquiring mind, and never having witnessed the
process before, he cried out to him, after some moments lost in
conjecture--

'My good man, what are you fishing for?'

'A land-agent,' answered Isaac Walton.

'A land-agent?' repeated the rector, misdoubting his ears.

The saturnine angler made no answer.

'And has a gentleman been drowned here?' he persisted.

The man only looked at him across the stream, and nodded.

'Eh! and his name, pray?'

'Old Nutter, of the Mills,' he replied.

The rector made a woeful ejaculation, and stared at the careless
operator, who had a pipe in his mouth the while, which made him averse
from conversation. He would have liked to ask him more questions, but he
was near the village, and refrained himself; and he met Toole at the
corner of the bridge who, leaning on the shoulder of the rector's horse,
gave him the sad story in full.

CHAPTER LII.

CONCERNING A ROULEAU OF GUINEAS AND THE CRACK OF A PISTOL.

Dangerfield went up the river that morning with his rod and net, and his
piscatory fidus Achates, Irons, at his elbow. It was a nice gray sky,
but the clerk was unusually silent even for him; and the sardonic
piscator appeared inscrutably amused as he looked steadily upon the
running waters. Once or twice the spectacles turned full upon the clerk,
over Dangerfield's shoulder, with a cynical light, as if he were on the
point of making one of his ironical jokes; but he turned back again with
a little whisk, the jest untold, whatever it was, to the ripple and the
fly, and the coy gray troutlings.

At last, Dangerfield said over his shoulder, with the same amused look,
'Do you remember Charles Archer?'