nsation alone,
without consulting you; though, by George! if 'tweren't for pitying the
poor child, I'd like to leave it to you as a religious man, and watch you
developing your reasons for giving him nothing."

"And it was you," muttered Sam, with a kind of stony wonder, "who advised
me just now to let my son run wild!"

"I did, and I do." John Rosewarne stood up and gripped his staff.
"By the way, too," he said, "your mother was a good woman."

"I don't want to hear anything about it."

"I know; but I wanted to tell you. Good-bye."

He turned abruptly and went his way down the hill. As he went, his lips
moved. He was talking not to himself, but to an unseen companion--

"Mary! Mary!--that this should be the fruit of our sowing!"

CHAPTER IV.

ROSEWARNE'S PENANCE.

Beside the winding Avon above Warwick bridge there stretches a flat
meadow, along the brink of which on a summer evening you may often count a
score of anglers seated and watching their floats; decent citizens of
Warwick, with a sprinkling of redcoats from the garrison. They say that
two-thirds of the Trappist brotherhood are ex-soldiers; and perhaps if we
knew the reason we might also know why angling has a peculiar fascination
for the military.

Angling was but a pretext, however, with a young corporal of the 6th
Regiment, who sat a few yards away on John Rosewarne's right, and smoked
his pipe, and cast frequent furtive glances, now along the river path,
now back and across the meadow where another path led from the town.
Each of these glances ended in a resentful stare at his too-near
neighbour, who fished on unregarding.

"Is this a favourite corner of yours?" the corporal asked after a while,
with meaning.

"I have fished on this exact spot for thirty-five years," answered John
Rosewarne, not lifting his eyes from the float.

The corporal whistled. "Thirty-five years! It's queer, now, that I never
set eyes on you before--and I come here pretty often."

Rosewarne let a full minute go by before he answered again.
"There's nothing queer about it, Unless you've been stationed long in
Warwick."

"Best part of a year."

"Quite so: I fish in Avon once a year only."

"Belong to the town?"

"No; nor within two hundred miles of it."

"You must think better of the sport than I do, to come all that distance."

John Rosewarne lifted his eyes for the first time and turned them upon the
young man.

"_What_ sport?" he asked.