keen eyes, great activity, and approved pluck well fitted Will for such duties. He often walked twenty miles a day, and fishermen said that he knew every big trout in the Teign from Fingle Bridge to the dark pools and rippling steps under Sittaford Tor, near the river’s twin birthplaces. He also knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to moor; where the kingfisher’s nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole behind a silver birch.

Will bid the angler “good afternoon,” and made a few general remarks on sport and the present unfavourable condition of the water, shrunk to mere ribbons of silver by a long summer drought. The fisherman was a stranger to Will—a handsome, stalwart man, with a heavy amber moustache, hard blue eyes, and a skin tanned red by hotter suns than English Augusts know. His disposition, also, as it seemed, reflected years of a tropic or subtropic existence, for this trivial meeting and momentary intrusion upon his solitude resulted in an explosion as sudden as unreasonable and unexpected.

“Keep back, can’t you?” he exclaimed while the young keeper approached his side; “who ’s going to catch fish with your lanky shadow across the water?”

Will was up in arms instantly.

“Do ’e think I doan’t knaw my business? Theer ’s my shadder ’pon the bank a mile behind you; an’ I didn’t ope my mouth till you’d fished the stickle to the bottom and missed two rises.”

This criticism angered the elder man, and he freed his tailfly fiercely from the rush-head that held it.

“Mind your own affairs and get out of my sight, whoever you are. This river’s not what it used to be by a good deal. Over-fished and poached, and not looked after, I’ll swear.”

Thus, in ignorance, the sportsman uttered words of all most like to set Will Blanchard’s temper loose—a task sufficiently easy at the best of times.

“What the hell d’ you knaw ’bout the river?” he flamed out. “And as to ’my affairs,’ ’t is my affairs, an’ I be water-bailiff, an’ I’ll thank you for the number of your ticket—so now then!”

“What’s become of Morgan?” asked the other.

“He ’m fust, I be second; and ’t is my job to take the license numbers.”

“Pity you’re such an uncivil young cub, then.”

“Gimme your ticket directly minute!”

“I’m not going to.”

The keeper looked wicked enough by this time, but he made a great effort to hold himself in.

“Why for not?”

“Because I didn’t take one.”

“That ban’t gwaine to do for me.”

“Ban’t it? Then you’ll have to go without any reason. Now run away and don’t bleat so loud.”

“Look here,” retorted Will, going straight up to the fisherman, and taking his measure with a flashing eye, “You gimme your ticket number or your name an’ address, else I’ll make ’e.”

They counted nearly the same inches, but the angler was the elder, and a man of more powerful build and massive frame than his younger opponent. His blue eyes and full, broad face spoke a pugnacity not less pronounced than the keeper’s own finer features indicated; and thus these two, destined for long years to bulk largely each upon the life of the other, stood eye to eye for the first time. Will’s temper was nearly gone, and now another sneer set it loose with sudden and startling result.

“Make me, my young moorcock? Two more words and I’ll throw you across the river!”

The two words were not forthcoming, but Will dropped his stick and shot forward straight and strong as an angry dog. He closed before the stranger could dispose of his rod, gripped him with a strong wrestling hold, and cross-buttocked him heavily in the twinkling of an eye. The big man happily fell without hurt upon soft sand at the river’s brink; but the indignity of this defeat roused his temper effectually. He grinned nevertheless as he rose again, shook the sand off his face, and licked his hands.

“Good Devon, sure enough, my son; now I’ll teach you something you never heard tell of, and break your damned fool’s neck for you into the bargain!”

But Phoebe, who had wandered slowly on, returned quickly at the sound of the scuffle and high words. Now she fluttered between the combatants and rendered any further encounter for the time impossible. They could not close again with the girl between them, and the stranger, his anger holding its breath, glanced at her with sudden interest, stayed his angry growl, suffered rage to wane out of his eyes and frank admiration to appear in them.

“Doan’t be fighting!” cried Phoebe. “Whatever’s the mischief, Will? Do bate your speed of hand! You’ve thrawed the gentleman down, seemin’ly.”

“Wheer ’s his ticket to then?”

“Why, it isn’t Miller Lyddon’s young maid, surely!” burst out the fisherman; “not Phoebe grown to woman!”

A Devon accent marked the speech, suddenly dragged from him by surprise.

“Ess, I be Phoebe Lyddon; but don’t ’e fall ’pon each other again, for the Lard’s sake,” she said.

“The boy ’s as tetchy in temper as a broody hen. I was only joking all the time, and see how he made me pay for my joke. But to think I should remember you! Grown from bud to pretty blossom, by God! And I danced you on my knee last time I saw you!”

“Then you ’m wan of they two Grimbal brothers as was to be home again in Chagford to-day!” exclaimed Will.

“That’s so; Martin and I landed at Plymouth yesterday. We got to Chagford early this morning.”

Will laughed.

“I never!” he said. “Why, you be lodging with my awn mother at the cottage above Rushford Bridge! You was expected this marnin’, but I couldn’t wait for ’e. You ’m Jan Grimbal—eh?”

“Right! And you ’re a nice host, to be sure!”

“’T is solemn truth, you ’m biding under our roof, the ‘Three Crowns’ bein’ full just now. And I’m sorry I thrawed ’e; but you was that glumpy, and of course I didn’t know ’e from Adam. I’m Will Blanchard.”

“Never mind, Will, we’ll try again some day. I could wrestle a bit once, and learned a new trick or two from a Yankee in Africa.”

“You’ve come back ’mazin’ rich they say, Jan Grimbal?”

“So, so. Not millionaires, but all right—both of us, though I’m the snug man of the two. We got to Africa at the right moment, before 1867, you know, the year that O’Reilly saw a nigger-child playing with the first Kimberley diamond ever found. Up we went, the pair of us. Things have hummed since then, and claims and half-claims and quarter-claims are coming to be worth a Jew’s eye. We’re all right, anyway, and I’ve got a stake out there yet.”

“You ’m well pleased to come back to dear li’l Chagford after so many years of foreign paarts, I should think, Mr. Grimbal?” said Phoebe.

“Ay, that I am. There’s no place like Devon, in all the earth, and no spot like Chagford in Devon. I’m too hard grit to wink an eyelid at sight of the old scenes again myself; but Martin, when he caught first sight of great rolling Cosdon crowning the land—why, his eyes were wetted, if you’ll believe it.”

“And you comed right off to fish the river fust thing,” said Will admiringly.

“Ay, couldn’t help it. When I heard the water calling, it was more than my power to keep away. But you ’re cruel short of rain, seemingly, and of course the season ’s nearly over.”

“I’ll shaw you dark hovers, wheer braave feesh be lying yet,” promised Will; and the angler thanked him, foretelling a great friendship. Yet his eyes rarely roamed from Phoebe, and anon, as all three proceeded, John Grimbal stopped at the gate of Monks Barton and held the girl in conversation awhile. But first he despatched Will homewards with a message for his mother. “Let Mrs.