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 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.