provided it was not divulged;
but he had always a sneer for the generosity of others.

CHAPTER II.

WANDERING back towards Moleswich, Kenelm found himself a little before
sunset on the banks of the garrulous brook, almost opposite to the house
inhabited by Lily Mordaunt. He stood long and silently by the grassy
margin, his dark shadow falling over the stream, broken into fragments
by the eddy and strife of waves, fresh from their leap down the
neighbouring waterfall. His eyes rested on the house and the garden lawn
in the front. The upper windows were open. "I wonder which is hers," he
said to himself. At last he caught a glimpse of the gardener, bending
over a flower border with his watering-pot, and then moving slowly
through the little shrubbery, no doubt to his own cottage. Now the lawn
was solitary, save that a couple of thrushes dropped suddenly on the
sward.

"Good evening, sir," said a voice. "A capital spot for trout this."

Kenelm turned his head, and beheld on the footpath, just behind him,
a respectable elderly man, apparently of the class of a small retail
tradesman, with a fishing-rod in his hand and a basket belted to his
side.

"For trout," replied Kenelm; "I dare say. A strangely attractive spot
indeed."

"Are you an angler, sir, if I may make bold to inquire?" asked the
elderly man, somewhat perhaps puzzled as to the rank of the stranger;
noticing, on the one hand, his dress and his mien, on the other, slung
to his shoulders, the worn and shabby knapsack which Kenelm had carried,
at home and abroad, the preceding year.

"Ay, I am an angler."

"Then this is the best place in the whole stream. Look, sir, there
is Izaak Walton's summer-house; and further down you see that white,
neat-looking house. Well, that is my house, sir, and I have an apartment
which I let to gentleman anglers. It is generally occupied throughout
the summer months. I expect every day to have a letter to engage it,
but it is vacant now. A very nice apartment, sir,--sitting-room and
bedroom."

"_Descende ceolo, et dic age tibia_," said Kenelm.

"Sir?" said the elderly man.

"I beg you ten thousand pardons. I have had the misfortune to have been
at the university, and to have learned a little Latin, which sometimes
comes back very inopportunely. But, speaking in plain English, what
I meant to say is this: I invoked the Muse to descend from heaven and
bring with her--the original says a fife, but I meant--a fishing-r