stranger," he
cried as I turned and he hopped down to my side with the activity of a
much younger man.

"Yes," I said, "I only came down from London yesterday. I find the spot
so delightful that I haven't bothered much about the sport. Still, I've
had about enough of it now." And I prepared to take my rod to pieces.

"Spot and sport!" laughed the old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for a
pun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, young
gentleman, did you? And where may you be staying?"

I described the position of my cottage without the slightest hesitation;
for this parson did not scare me; except in appearance he had so
little in common with his type as I knew it. He had, however, about the
shrewdest pair of eyes that I have ever seen, and my answer only served
to intensify their open scrutiny.

"How on earth did you come to hear of a God-forsaken place like this?"
said he, making use, I thought, of a somewhat stronger expression than
quite became his cloth.

"Squire Rattray told me of it," said I.

"Ha! So you're a friend of his, are you?" And his eyes went through and
through me like knitting-needles through a ball of wool.

"I could hardly call myself that," said I. "But Mr. Rattray has been
very kind to me."

"Meet him in town?"

I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, for his tone had dropped
into the confidential, and I disliked it as much as this string of
questions from a stranger.

"Long ago, sir?" he pursued.

"No, sir; not long ago," I retorted.

"May I ask your name?" said he.

"You may ask what you like," I cried, with a final reversal of all my
first impressions of this impertinent old fellow; "but I'm hanged if
I tell it you! I am here for rest and quiet, sir. I don't ask you your
name. I can't for the life of me see what right you have to ask me mine,
or to question me at all, for that matter."

He favored me with a brief glance of extraordinary suspicion. It faded
away in mere surprise, and, next instant, my elderly and reverend friend
was causing me some compunction by coloring like a boy.

"You may think my curiosity mere impertinence, sir," said he; "you would
think otherwise if you knew as much as I do of Squire Rattray's friends,
and how little you resemble the generality of them. You might even feel
some sympathy for one of the neighboring clergy, to whom this godless
young man has been for years as a thorn in their side."

He spoke so gravely, and