oing what the rustic--or
surely it should have been the cockney--was supposed to stand still and
wait for. There was no great rush of headlong water, for that is not
the manner of the stream in the very worst of weather; but there was the
usual style of coming on, with lips and steps at the sides, and cords of
running toward the middle. Quite enough, at any rate, to make the trout
jump, without any omen of impending drought, and to keep all the play
and the sway of movement going on serenely.

I began to be afraid that the miller must have failed in his stratagem
against the water-god, and that, as I had read in Pope's Homer, the
liquid deity would beat the hero, when all of a sudden there were signs
that man was the master of this little rustic. Broadswords of flag and
rapiers of water-grass, which had been quivering merrily, began to hang
down and to dip themselves in loops, and the stones of the brink showed
dark green stripes on their sides as they stood naked. Then fine little
cakes of conglomerated stuff, which only a great man of nature could
describe, came floating about, and curdling into corners, and holding
on to one another in long-tailed strings. But they might do what they
liked, and make their very best of it, as they fell away to nothing upon
stones and mud. For now more important things began to open, the like
of which never had been yielded up before--plots of slimy gravel, varied
with long streaks of yellow mud, dotted with large double shells, and
parted into little oozy runs by wriggling water-weeds. And here was
great commotion and sad panic of the fish, large fellows splashing and
quite jumping out of water, as their favorite hovers and shelves ran
dry, and darting away, with their poor backs in the air, to the deepest
hole they could think of. Hundreds must have come to flour, lard, and
butter if boys had been there to take advantage. But luckily things had
been done so well that boys were now in their least injurious moment,
destroying nothing worse than their own dinners.

A very little way below the old wooden bridge the little river ran into
a deepish pool, as generally happens at or near a corner, especially
where there is a confluence sometimes. And seeing nothing, as I began to
search intently, stirring with a long-handled spud which I had brought,
I concluded that even my golden eagle had been carried into that deep
place. However, water or no water, I resolved to have it out with that
d