ces. Then turning
right away, he said, quietly--

"Yes, there's someone's face looking over from the back. Who can it
be?"

"Can't you see, father?"

"No; unless it's James."

"It is, father; I saw his face just now quite clear. What does he want
there? Does he want to speak to you about coming back?"

"Hardly so soon as this, my boy," said Will's father, rather sadly.
"Brought here by curiosity, I suppose, like our other friends--a good
sign, Will. He takes an interest in the old mill, after all."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE ALARM.

A fortnight had glided by. The dam was kept more than full by hours of
stormy weather high up in the hills many miles away; but the stream had
resumed its gentle course, the trout were back in their old haunts,
Manners had finished one of his landscapes and begun another, and one
soft, sweet, very early autumn evening three busy pairs of hands where
at work at the round table plainly visible in the light cast by Mrs
Drinkwater's shaded lamp.

"No," said Will, who was holding something in a pair of pliers in his
left hand, and winding a thread of silk brought up from the mill round
it with his right, "he hasn't been near us yet. Josh and I keep running
against him in the woods, or up one of the river paths; but, as soon as
he sees us, he turns his back and goes in among the trees."

"Shies at us," interpolated Josh.

"Yes," said Will, softly, as he wound away, his face screwed up and
looking intent to a degree. "Shies! I say, Mr Manners, you, living
here, see him every day, of course?"

"No, I don't," said the artist. "He has his breakfast before I'm down,
and goes off and doesn't come back till after dark. The missus, poor
soul, told me yesterday--crying away like your old mill-wheel--that he
takes a bit of bread and cheese with him and goes off to sit and mope
somewhere in the woods. He never hardly speaks to her. She said, poor
thing, that she'd give anything to see him back at his regular work."

"Ha!" cried Will, holding up the something proudly upon which he had
been at work. "Now, I call that something like a coachman."

"Not a bit," said Josh. "How can a little hook, a thread of gut, a few
small feathers, and some dubbing, be like a coachman?"

"Get out, Clevershakes! What an old chop-logic you are! I didn't
christen that kind of artificial fly a coachman; but it's a well-made
one, isn't it, Mr Manners?"

"Well, yes, very nicely made; but it's no