f Izaak Walton, indeed, dared to fling
a line from the banks of Rockville grove, but Sir Roger came upon him and
endeavored to seize him. The man coolly walked into the middle of the
river, and, without a word, continued his fishing.

"Get out there!" exclaimed Sir Roger, "that is still on my property." The
man walked through the river to the other bank, where he knew that the
land was rented by a farmer. "Give over," shouted Sir Roger, "I tell you
the water is mine."

"Then," said the fellow, "bottle it up, and be hanged to you! Don't you
see it is running away to Stockington?"

There was bad blood between Rockville and Stockington-green. Stockington
was incensed, and Sir Roger was hairsore.

A new nuisance sprung up. The people of Stockington looked on the
cottagers of Rockville as sunk in deepest darkeness under such a man as
Sir Roger and his cousin the vicar. They could not picnic, but they
thought they could hold a camp-meeting; they could not fish for roach,
but they thought they might for souls. Accordingly there assembled crowds
of Stockingtonians on the green of Rockville, with a chair and a table,
and a preacher with his head bound in a red handkerchief; and soon there
was a sound of hymns, and a zealous call to come out of the darkness of
the spiritual Babylon. But this was more than Sir Roger could bear; he
rushed forth with all his servants, keepers, and cottagers, overthrew
the table, and routing the assembly, chased them to the boundary of his
estate.

The discomfited Stockingtonians now fulminated awful judgments on the
unhappy Sir Roger, as a persecutor and a malignant. They dared not enter
again on his park, but they came to the very verge of it, and held weekly
meetings on the highway, in which they sang and declaimed as loudly as
possible, that the winds might bear their voices to Sir Roger's ears.

To such a position was now reduced the last of the long line of
Rockville. The spirit of a policeman had taken possession of him. He had
keepers and watchers out on all sides, but they did not satisfy him. He
was perpetually haunted with the idea that poachers were after his game,
that trespassers were in his woods. His whole life was now spent in
stealing to and fro in his fields and plantations, and prowling along his
river side. He looked under hedges, and watched for long hours under the
forest trees. If any one had a curiosity to see Sir Roger, they had only
to enter his fields by the wood sid