time was not yet come; and
little he thought of all the work which lay ready for him within a
mile of the Priory, as he watched the ladies go out for the
afternoon, and slipped down to the Nun's-pool on his crutches to
smoke and fish, and build castles in the air.

The Priory, with its rambling courts and gardens, stood on an island
in the river. The upper stream flowed in a straight artificial
channel through the garden, still and broad, towards the Priory
mill; while just above the Priory wall half the river fell over a
high weir, with all its appendages of bucks and hatchways, and eel-
baskets, into the Nun's-pool, and then swept round under the ivied
walls, with their fantastic turrets and gables, and little loopholed
windows, peering out over the stream, as it hurried down over the
shallows to join the race below the mill. A postern door in the
walls opened on an ornamental wooden bridge across the weir-head--a
favourite haunt of all fishers and sketchers who were admitted to
the dragon-guarded Elysium of Whitford Priors. Thither Lancelot
went, congratulating himself, strange to say, in having escaped the
only human being whom he loved on earth.

He found on the weir-bridge two of the keepers. The younger one,
Tregarva, was a stately, thoughtful-looking Cornishman, some six
feet three in height, with thews and sinews in proportion. He was
sitting on the bridge looking over a basket of eel-lines, and
listening silently to the chat of his companion.

Old Harry Verney, the other keeper, was a character in his way, and
a very bad character too, though he was a patriarch among all the
gamekeepers of the vale. He was a short, wiry, bandy-legged,
ferret-visaged old man, with grizzled hair, and a wizened face
tanned brown and purple by constant exposure. Between rheumatism
and constant handling the rod and gun, his fingers were crooked like
a hawk's claws. He kept his left eye always shut, apparently to
save trouble in shooting; and squinted, and sniffed, and peered,
with a stooping back and protruded chin, as if he were perpetually
on the watch for fish, flesh, and fowl, vermin and Christian. The
friendship between himself and the Scotch terrier at his heels would
have been easily explained by Lessing, for in the transmigration of
souls the spirit of Harry Verney had evidently once animated a dog
of that breed. He was dressed in a huge thick fustian jacket,
scratched, stain