That go on pilgrimage--"

Mr. Molesworth did not actually sing these words. The tune he hummed was
a wordless one, and, for that matter, not even much of a tune. But he
afterwards declared very positively that he sang the sense of them,
being challenged by the birds calling in contention louder and louder as
the road dipped towards the stream, and by the music of lapsing water
which now began to possess his ear. For some five or six furlongs the
road descended under beech-boughs, between slopes carpeted with last
year's leaves: but by and by the beeches gave place to an oak coppice with
a matted undergrowth of the whortleberry; and where these in turn broke
off, and a plantation of green young larches climbed the hill, the wild
hyacinths ran down to the stream in sheet upon sheet of blue.

Mr. Molesworth rested his creel on the low hedge above one of these sheets
of blue, and with the music of the stream in his ears began to unpack Sir
Warwick Moyle's fishing-rod. For a moment he paused, bethinking himself,
with another short laugh, that, without flies, neither rod nor line would
catch him a fish. But decidedly fortune was kind to him to-day: for,
opening the creel, he found Sir Warwick's fly-book within it, bulging with
hooks and flies by the score--nay, by the hundred. He unbuckled the strap
and was turning the leaves to make his choice, when his ear caught the
sound of footsteps, and he lifted his eyes to see Sir John Crang coming
down the road.

"Hullo!" hailed Sir John. "I saw you slip out of the station and took a
fancy that I'd follow. Pretty little out-of-the-way spot, this. Eh?
Why, where on earth did you pick up those angling traps?"

"I stole them," answered Mr. Molesworth deliberately, choosing a fly.
He did not in the least desire Sir John's company, but somehow found
himself too full of good-nature to resent it actively.

"Stole 'em?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, they belong to a friend of mine. They were
lying ready to hand in the station, and I borrowed them without leave.
He won't mind."

"You're a cool one, I must say." It may be that the recent agitation of
his feelings had shaken Sir John's native vulgarity to the surface.
Certainly he spoke now with a commonness of idiom and accent he was
usually at pains to conceal. "You must have a fair nerve altogether,
for all you're such a quiet-looking chap. Hadn't even the curiosity--had
you?--to find out what had gone wrong; but just pi