pugnacious nose, good shoulders, and a figure so well put together that his height was not apparent until he stood alongside another man. Will’s eyes were grey as Phoebe’s, but of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy as the recent weather, full of the alternate mist and flash of a precious stone, one moment all a-dreaming, the next aglow. His natural look was at first sight a little stern until a man came to know it, then this impression waned and left a critic puzzled. The square cut of his face and abrupt angle of his jaw did not indeed belie Will Blanchard, but the man’s smile magically dissipated this austerity of aspect, and no sudden sunshine ever brightened a dark day quicker than pleasure made bright his features. It was a sulky, sleepy, sweet, changeable face—very fascinating in the eyes of women. His musical laugh once fluttered sundry young bosoms, brightened many pretty eyes and cheeks, but Will’s heart was Phoebe Lyddon’s now—had been for six full months—and albeit a mere country boy in knowledge of the world, younger far than his one-and-twenty years of life, and wholly unskilled in those arts whose practice enables men to dwell together with friendship and harmony, yet Will Blanchard was quite old enough and wise enough and rich enough to wed, and make a husband of more than common quality at that—in his own opinion.

Fortified by this conviction, and determined to wait no longer, he now came to see Phoebe. Within the sheltering arms of the Pixies’ Parlour he kissed her, pressed her against his wet velveteen jacket, then sat down under the rocks beside her.

“You ’m comed wi’ the sun, dear Will.”

“Ay—the weather breaks. I hope theer’ll be a drop more water down the river bimebye. You got my letter all right?”

“Ess fay, else I shouldn’t be here. And this tremendous matter in hand?”

“I thought you’d guess what ’t was. I be weary o’ waitin’ for ’e. An’ as I comed of age last month, I’m a man in law so well as larnin’, and I’m gwaine to speak to Miller Lyddon this very night.”

Phoebe looked blank. There was a moment’s silence while Will picked and ate the wood-strawberries in his sweetheart’s dress.

“Caan’t ’e think o’ nothin’ wiser than to see faither?” she said at last.

“Theer ban’t nothin’ wiser. He knaws we ’m tokened, and it’s no manner o’ use him gwaine on pretendin’ to himself ’t isn’t so. You ’m wife-old, and you’ve made choice o’ me; and I’m a ripe man, as have thought a lot in my time, and be earnin’ gude money and all. Besides, ’t is a dead-sure fact I’ll have auld Morgan’s place as head waterkeeper, an’ the cottage along with it, in fair time.”

“Ban’t for me to lift up no hindrances, but you knaw faither.”

“Ess, I do—for a very stiff-necked man.”

“Maybe ’t is so; but a gude faither to me.”

“An’ a gude friend to me, for that matter. He aint got nothing ’gainst me, anyway—no more ’s any man living.”

“Awnly the youth and fieriness of ’e.”

“Me fiery! I lay you wouldn’t find a cooler chap in Chagford.”

“You ’m a dinky bit comical-tempered now and again, dear heart.”

He flushed, and the corners of his jaw thickened.

“If a man was to say that, I’d knock his words down his throat.”

“I knaw you would, my awn Will; an’ that’s bein’ comical-tempered, ban’t it?”

“Then perhaps I’d best not to see your faither arter all, if you ’m that way o’ thinkin’,” he answered shortly.

Then Phoebe purred to him and rubbed her cheek against his chin, whereon the glint vanished from his eyes, and they were soft again.

“Mother’s the awnly livin’ sawl what understands me,” he said slowly.

“And I—I too, Will!” cried Phoebe. “Ess fay. I’ll call you a holy angel if you please, an’ God knaws theer ’s not an angel in heaven I’d have stead of ’e.”

“I ban’t no angel,” said Will gravely, “and never set up for no such thing; but I’ve thought a lot ’bout the world in general, and I’m purty wise for a home-stayin’ chap, come to think on it; and it’s borne in ’pon me of late days that the married state ’s a gude wan, and the sooner the better.”

“But a leap in the dark even for the wisest, Will?”

“So’s every other step us takes for that matter. Look at them grasshoppers. Off they goes to glory and doan’t knaw no more ’n the dead wheer they’ll fetch up. I’ve seed ’em by the river jump slap in the water, almost on to a trout’s back. So us hops along and caan’t say what’s comin’ next. We ’m built to see just beyond our awn nose-ends and no further. That’s philosophy.”

“Ban’t comfortin’ if ’t is,” said Phoebe.

“Whether or no, I’ll see your faither ’fore night and have a plain answer. I’m a straight, square man, so’s the miller.”

“You’ll speed poorly, I’m fearin’, but ’t is a honest thing; and I’ll tell faither you ’m all the world to me. He doan’t seem to knaw what it is for a gal to be nineteen year old somehow.”

Solemnly Will rose, almost overweighted with the consciousness of what lay before him.

“We’ll go home-along now. Doan’t ’e tell him I’m coming. I’ll take him unbeknawnst. And you keep out the way till I be gone again.”

“Does your mother knaw, Will?”

“Ess, she an’ Chris both knaw I be gwaine to have it out this night. Mother sez I be right, but that Miller will send me packing wi’ a flea in my ear; Chris sez I be wrong to ax yet awhile.”

“You can see why that is; ’she ’s got to wait herself,” said Phoebe, rather spitefully.

“Waitin’ ’s well enough when it caan’t be helped. But in my case, as a man of assured work and position in the plaace, I doan’t hold it needful no more.”

Together the young couple marched down over the meadows, gained the side of the river, and followed its windings to the west. Through a dip in the woods presently peeped the ancient stannary town of Chagford, from the summit of its own little eminence on the eastern confines of Dartmoor. Both Will and Phoebe dwelt within the parish, but some distance from the place itself. She lived at Monks Barton, a farm and mill beside the stream; he shared an adjacent cottage with his mother and sister. Only a bend of the river separated the dwellings of the lovers—where Rushford Bridge spanned the Teign and beech and fir rose above it.

In a great glory of clearness after rain, boy and girl moved along together under the trees. The fisherman’s path which they followed wound where wet granite shone and ivy glimmered beneath the forest; and the leaves still dripped briskly, making a patter of sound through the underwood, and marking a thousand circles and splashes in the smooth water beneath the banks of the stream. Against a purple-grey background of past rain the green of high summer shone bright and fresh, and each moss-clad rock and fern-fringed branch of the forest oaks sent forth its own incense of slender steam where the sunlight sparkled and sucked up the moisture. Scarce half a mile from Phoebe’s home a shining yellow twig bent and flashed against the green, and a broad back appeared through a screen of alder by the water’s edge.

“’T is a rod,” said Will. “Bide a moment, and I’ll take the number of his ticket. He ’m the first fisherman I’ve seen to-day.”

As under-keeper or water-bailiff to the Fishing Association, young Blanchard’s work consisted in endless perambulation of the river’s bank, in sharp outlook for poacher and trespasser, and in the survey of fishermen’s bridges, and other contrivances for anglers that occurred along the winding course of the waters. His also was the duty of noting the license numbers, and of surprising those immoral anglers who sought to kill fish illegally on distant reaches of the river. His