I was twenty-five on the night this tale begins—­twenty-five year old, and a proper night-hawk of a chap, as loved the hours of darkness and gloried in the shedding of blood.  Sport was in my veins, so to say, handed down from father to son, for my grandfather had been a gamekeeper, and my father a water-bailiff, and my uncle—­my father’s brother—­a huntsman.  That was the line of life I’d thirsted for, or even to go for a jockey.  But Nature weren’t of the same mind.  I growed six foot tall afore I was seventeen—­my mother’s family was all whackers—­and so riding was out of the question, and I went on the land and worked behind the horses instead of on ’em.

Well, the river ran very suent through the water-meadows below my village, and there was wonnerful fine stickles and reaches for trout, and proper deep pools for salmon.  And on a fine night in June, with the moonlight bright as day, I was down beside it a bit after one o’clock, busy about a little matter of night-lines.  I meant to make an experiment, too, because I’d read in a book how the salmon will come up to stare if you hold a bright light over ’em.  They’ll goggle up at you and get dazed by the light, and then you can spear ’em as easy as picking blackberries.  ’Twas news to me, but a thing very well to know if true, and I got a bull’s-eye lantern to prove it.

Through a hayfield—­half cut, ’twas—­I went, where the moon throwed a shadow beside each uplifted pook, and the air was heavy with the scent, and a corncrake somewhere was making a noise like sharpening a scythe.  A few trout were rising at the night moths, but nothing moved of any account in the open, and I pushed forward where the hayfield ended at the edge of the woods.  There, just fifty yards inside the trees, was one of the properest pools on the river; and, having set my night-lines for a trout or two higher up, I came down to the salmon pool, spear in hand, and lit my lantern and got on a rock in the mid-channel, where ’twas clear and still, with nought but the oily twist and twirl of the currents running deep beneath me.

I felt so bold as a lion that night, for Squire Champernowne, of Woodcotes, had died at dawn, and the countryside was all in a commotion, and I knowed, what with talking and drinking in the pubs and running about all day, that not a keeper would be to work after dark.  A very good man had been the Squire, though peppery and uncertain in his temper, and quick to take offence, but honest and well-liked by all who worked for him.  ’Twas one of they tragical moments, long expected but none the less exciting, when death came, and I felt certain sure that I should have the river to myself till morning.