Meanwhile our other early riser, Arthur, had made his way first to the foot of the lake and then along the little path that skirted its area till he came to Caresfoot Staff.  Having sufficiently admired that majestic oak, for he was a great lover of timber, he proceeded to investigate the surrounding water with the eye of a true fisherman.  A few yards further up there jutted into the water that fragment of wall on which stood the post, now quite rotten, to which Angela had bound herself on the day of the great storm.  At his feet, too, the foundations of another wall ran out for some distance into the lake, being, doubtless, the underpinning of an ancient boathouse, but this did not rise out of the water, but stopped within six inches of the surface.  Between these two walls lay a very deep pool.

“Just the place for a heavy fish,” reflected Arthur, and, even as he thought it, he saw a five-pound carp rise nearly to the surface, in order to clear the obstruction of the wall, and sink silently into the depths.

Retiring carefully to one of two quaintly carven stone blocks placed at the foot of the oak-tree, on which, doubtless, many a monk had sat in meditation, he set himself to get his fishing-gear together.  Presently, however, struck by the beauty of the spot and its quiet, only broken by the songs of many nesting birds, he stopped a while to look around him.  Above his head the branches of a great oak, now clothing themselves with the most vivid green, formed a dome-like roof, beneath the shade of which grew the softest moss, starred here and there with primroses and violets.  Outside the circle of its shadow the brushwood of mingled hazel and ash-stubs rose thick and high, ringing-in the little spot as with a wall, except where its depths were pierced by the passage of a long green lane of limes that, unlike the shrubberies, appeared to be kept in careful order, and of which the arching boughs formed a perfect leafy tunnel.  Before him lay the lake where the long morning lights quivered and danced, as its calm was now and again ruffled by a gentle breeze.  The whole scene had a lovely and peaceful look, and, gazing on it, Arthur fell into a reverie.

Sitting thus dreamily, his face looked at its best, its expression of gentle thoughtfulness giving it an attraction beyond what it was entitled to, judged purely from a sculptor’s point of view.  It was an intellectual face, a face that gave signs of great mental possibilities, but for all that a little weak about the mouth.  The brow indicated some degree of power, and the mouth and eyes no small capacities for affection and all sorts of human sympathy and kindness.  These last, in varying lights, could change as often as the English climate; their groundwork, however, was blue, and they were honest and bonny.  In short, a man in looking at Arthur Heigham at the age of twenty-four would have reflected that, even among English gentlemen, he was remarkable for his gentleman-like appearance, and a “fellow