er the residue of some old hedge, which would
shelter me a little toward the hollow of the banks. I passed low places,
where the man must have seen me if he had happened to look up; but he
was stooping with his back to me, and working in the hollow of the dry
water trough. He was digging with the long spike of his rod, and I heard
the rattle of each pebble that he struck.

Before he stood up again, to ease his back and to look at the
ground which he still had to turn, I was kneeling behind a short,
close-branched holly, the very last bush of the hedge-row, scarcely
fifteen yards from the hawthorn-tree. It was quite impossible to get
nearer without coming face to face with him. And now I began again to
tremble, but with a great effort conquered it.

The man was panting with his labor, and seemed to be in a vile temper
too. He did not swear, but made low noises full of disappointment. And
then he caught up his tool, with a savage self-control, and fell to
again.

Now was my time to see what he was like, and engrave him on my memory.
But, lo! in a moment I need not do that. The face was the bad image
of my father's. A lowered, and vicious, and ill-bred image of a noble
countenance--such as it was just possible to dream that my dear father's
might have fallen to, if his mind and soul had plunged away from the
good inborn and implanted in them. The figure was that of a tall strong
man, with shoulders rather slouching, and a habit of keeping his head
thrown back, which made a long chin look longer. Altogether he seemed a
perilous foe, and perhaps a friend still more perilous.

Be he what he might, he was working very hard. Not one of all Uncle
Sam's men, to my knowledge, least of all Martin, would have worked so
hard. With his narrow and ill-adapted tool he contrived to turn over, in
less than twenty minutes, the entire bed of the meadow-leet, or trough,
for a length of about ten yards. Then he came to the mouth, where the
water of the main stream lapped back into it, and he turned up the
bottom as far as he could reach, and waited for the mud he had raised to
clear away. When this had flowed down with the stream, he walked in for
some little distance till the pool grew deep; but in spite of all his
labor, there was nothing.

Meanwhile the sunset glow was failing, and a gray autumnal haze crept up
the tranquil valley. Shadows waned and faded into dimness more diffuse,
and light grew soft and vague and vaporous. The gleam