own with them to the water side.

"Course I'll lend it to you, lads," he said. "Wish I could come wi'
you."

"Do, then, Hicky. It's a long time since we've had a fish."

"Nay; don't ask me," was the reply. "I wean't leave the work. Ay, bud
it's nice to be a boy," he added, with a smile.

"Couldn't you do your work afterward?" cried Tom.

"Nay, nay, don't tempt a poor weak fellow," he cried. "I'm going to do
that bit o' sawing 'fore I leave it. Now, theer, in wi' you!"

The boys made another appeal to the great fellow to come; but he was
staunch. Still he uttered a sigh of relief as he gave the punt a
tremendous thrust from the bank into deep water, where it went rustling
by the willow boughs and over the wild growth where the pink-blossomed
persicaria sent up its pretty heads.

"If we had pressed Hicky a little more, I believe he would have come,"
said Dick.

"No, he wouldn't. He never will when he says he won't."

Just at that moment Hickathrift was muttering to himself on the bank, as
he watched the boat.

"Straange thing," he said, "that a girt big man like I am should allus
feel like a boy. I wanted to go wi' they two straange and badly. I
will go next time."

Taking it in turns, the boys sent the punt quickly over the amber water,
the exercise in the bright sunshine chasing the clouds from Dick's
countenance, so that before they reached their intended landing-place on
the edge of the mere, as near as they could go to the spot where Mr
Marston's men were at work, he was once more his old self, laughing,
reckoning on the fish they would catch with the trimmers that lay ready,
and forgetting for the time all about the plots to injure the drain and
its projectors.

There was a low patch of alders at the spot where they intended to land,
and Dick was just about to run the punt close in, when he suddenly
ceased poling and stood motionless staring before him.

"What's the matter?" cried Tom.

There was no answer, in fact none was needed, for at that moment Tom's
eyes fell upon the object which had arrested his companion's action, to
wit, the flabby, unpleasant-looking face of Thorpeley, the constable,
that individual being seated by the low bushes smoking his pipe in a
position where he must have been watching the lads ever since they
started.

Dick's teeth gave forth a peculiar gritting sound, and then, thrusting
down the pole, he ran in the punt, leaped on to the quivering shore with
the ro