being worse friends.”
She went home again the happier for her conversation; but any thought that Mr. Lyddon might have been disposed to devote to her prophecy was for the time banished by the advent of John Grimbal and his brother.
Like boys home from school, they dwelt in the present delight of their return, and postponed the varied duties awaiting them, to revel again in the old sights, sounds, and scents. To-day they were about an angling excursion, and the fishers’ road to Fingle lying through Monks Barton, both brothers stopped a while and waited upon their old friend of the mill, according to John’s promise of the previous afternoon. Martin carried the creel and the ample luncheon it contained; John smoked a strong cigar and was only encumbered with his light fly-rod; the younger designed to accompany his brother through Fingle Valley; then leave him there, about his sport, and proceed alone to various places of natural and antiquarian interest. But John meant fishing and nothing else. To him great woods were no more than cover for fur and feathers; rivers and streams meant a vehicle for the display of a fly to trout, and only attracted him or the reverse, according to the fish they harboured. When the moorland waters spouted and churned, cherry red from their springs in the peat, he deemed them a noble spectacle; when, as at present, Teign herself had shrunk to a mere silver thread, and the fingerling trout splashed and wriggled half out of water in the shallows, he freely criticised its scanty volume and meagre depths.
Miller Lyddon welcomed the men very heartily. He had been amongst those who dismissed them with hope to their battle against the world, and now he reminded them of his sanguine predictions. Will Blanchard’s disappearance amused John Grimbal and he laughed when Billy Blee appeared red-hot with the news. Mr. Lyddon made no secret of his personal opinion of Blanchard, and all debated the probable design of the wanderer.
“Maybe he’s ’listed,” said John, “an’ a good thing too if he has. It makes a man of a young fellow. I’m for conscription myself—always have been.”
“I be minded to think he’ve joined the riders,” declared Billy. “Theer comed a circus here last month, with braave doin’s in the way of horsemanship and Merry Andrews, and such like devilries. Us all goes to see it from miles round every year; an’ Will was theer. Circus folk do see the world in a way denied to most, and theer manner of life takes ’em even as far as Russia and the Indies I’ve heard.”
“Then there’s the gypsy blood in him—” declared Mr. Lyddon, “that might send him roaming oversea, if nothing else did.”
“Or my great doings are like to have fired him,” said John. “How’s Phoebe?” he continued, dismissing Will. “I saw her yesterday—a bowerly maiden she’s grown—a prize for a better man that this wild youngster, now bolted God knaws where.”
“So I think,” agreed the miller, “an’ I hope she’ll soon forget the searching grey eyes of un and his high-handed way o’ speech. Gals like such things. Dear, dear! though he made me so darned angry last night, I could have laughed in his faace more ’n wance.”
“Missy’s under the weather this marnin’,” declared Billy. “Who tawld her I ban’t able to say, but she knawed he’d gone just arter feedin’ the fowls, and she went down valley alone, so slow, wi’ her purty head that bent it looked as if her sunbonnet might be hiding an auld gran’mother’s poll.”
“She’ll come round,” said Martin; “she’s only a young girl yet.”
“And there ’s fish as good in the sea as ever came out, and better,” declared his brother. “She must wait for a man who is a man—somebody of good sense and good standing, with property to his name.”
Miller Lyddon noted with surprise and satisfaction John Grimbal’s warmth of manner upon this question; he observed also the stout, hearty body of him, and the handsome face that crowned it. Then the brothers proceeded down-stream, and the master of Monks Barton looked after them and caught himself hoping that they might meet Phoebe.
At a point where the river runs between a giant shoulder of heather-clad hill on one side and the ragged expanses of Whiddon Park upon the other, John clambered down to the streamside and began to fish, while Martin dawdled at hand and watched the sport. A pearly clearness, caught from the clouds, characterised earth as well as air, and proved that every world-picture depends for atmosphere and colour upon the sky-picture extended above it. Again there was movement and some music, for the magic of the wind in a landscape’s nearer planes is responsible for both. The wooded valley lay under a grey and breezy forenoon; swaying alders marked each intermittent gust with a silver ripple of upturned foliage, and still reaches of the river similarly answered the wind with hurrying flickers and furrows of dimpled light. Through its transparent flood, where the waters ran in shadow and escaped reflections, the river revealed a bed of ruddy brown and rich amber. This harmonious colouring proceeded from the pebbly bottom, where a medley of warm agate tones spread and shimmered, like some far-reaching mosaic beneath the crystal. Above Teign’s shrunken current extended oak and ash, while her banks bore splendid concourse of the wild water-loving dwellers in that happy valley. Meadowsweet nodded creamy crests; hemlock and fool’s parsley and seeding willow-herb crowded together beneath far-scattered filigree of honeysuckles and brambles with berries, some ripe, some red; while the scarlet corals of briar and white bryony gemmed every riotous trailing thicket, dene, and dingle along the river’s brink; and in the grassy spaces between rose little chrysoprase steeples of wood sage all set in shining fern. Upon the boulders in midstream subaqueous mosses, now revealed and starved by the drought, died hard, and the seeds of grasses, figworts, and persicarias thrust up flower and foliage, flourishing in unwonted spots from which the next freshet would rudely tear them. Insect life did not abundantly manifest itself, for the day was sunless; but now and again, with crisp rattle of his gauze wings, a dragon-fly flashed along the river. Through these scenes the Teign rolled drowsily and with feeble pulses. Upon one bank rose the confines of Whiddon; on the other, abrupt and interspersed with gulleys of shattered shale, ascended huge slopes whereon a whole summer of sunshine had scorched the heather to dry death. But fading purple still gleamed here and there in points and splashes, and the lesser furze, mingling therewith, scattered gold upon the tremendous acclivities even to the crown of fir-trees that towered remote and very blue upon the uplifted sky-line. Swallows, with white breasts flashing, circled over the river, and while their elevation above the water appeared at times tremendous, the abrupt steepness of the gorge was such that the birds almost brushed the hillside with their wings. A sledge, laden with the timber of barked sapling oaks, creaked and jingled over the rough road beside the stream; a man called to his horses and a dog barked beside him; then they disappeared and the spacious scene was again empty, save for its manifold wild life and music.
John Grimbal fished, failed, and cursed the poor water and the lush wealth of the riverside that caught his fly at every critical moment. A few small trout he captured and returned; then, flinging down rod and net, he called to his brother for the luncheon-basket. Together they sat in the fern beside the river and ate heartily of the fare that Mrs. Blanchard had provided; then, as John was about to light a pipe, his brother, with a smile, produced a little wicker globe and handed it to him. This unexpected sight awoke sudden and keen appetite on the elder’s face. He smacked his lips, swore a hearty oath of rejoicing, and held out an eager hand for the thing.
“My God! to think I’ll suck the smoke of that again—the best baccy in the wide world!”
The little receptacle contained a rough sort of sun-dried Kaffir tobacco, such as John and Martin had both smoked for the past fifteen years.
“I thought it would be a treat. I brought home a few pounds,” said the younger, smiling again at his brother’s hungry delight. John cut into the case, loaded his pipe, and lighted it with a contented sign. Then he handed the rest back to its owner.
“No, no,” said Martin. “I’ll just have one fill, that’s all. I brought this for you. ’T will atone for the poor sport. The creel I shall leave with you now, for I’m away to Fingle Bridge and Prestonbury. We’ll meet at nightfall.”
Thereupon he set off down the valley, his mind full of early British encampments,