a vengeance!' laughed the colonel.
'Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England? eh? to fee English
keepers?

'No, sir. There's pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor folk
that want money more than we keepers. God knows we get too much--we
that hang about great houses and serve great folks' pleasure--you
toss the money down our throats, without our deserving it; and we
spend it as we get it--a deal too fast--while hard-working labourers
are starving.'

'And yet you would keep us in England?'

'Would God I could!'

'Why then, my good fellow?' asked Lancelot, who was getting
intensely interested with the calm, self-possessed earnestness of
the man, and longed to draw him out.

The colonel yawned.

'Well, I'll go and get myself a couple of bait. Don't you stir, my
good parson-keeper. Down charge, I say! Odd if I don't find a
bait-net, and a rod for myself, under the verandah.'

'You will, colonel. I remember, now, I set it there last morning;
but the water washed many things out of my brains, and some things
into them--and I forgot it like a goose.'

'Well, good-bye, and lie still. I know what a drowning is, and more
than one. A day and a night have I been in the deep, like the man
in the good book; and bed is the best of medicine for a ducking;'
and the colonel shook him kindly by the hand and disappeared.

Lancelot sat down by the keeper's bed.

'You'll get those fish-hooks into your trousers, sir; and this is a
poor place to sit down in.'

'I want you to say your say out, friend, fish-hooks or none.'

The keeper looked warily at the door, and when the colonel had
passed the window, balancing the trolling-rod on his chin, and
whistling merrily, he began,--

'"A day and a night have I been in the deep!"--and brought back no
more from it! And yet the Psalms say how they that go down to the
sea in ships see the works of the Lord!--If the Lord has opened
their eyes to see them, that must mean--'

Lancelot waited.

'What a gallant gentleman that is, and a valiant man of war, I'll
warrant,--and to have seen all the wonders he has, and yet to be
wasting his span of life like that!'

Lancelot's heart smote him.

'One would think, sir,--You'll pardon me for speaking out.' And the
noble face worked, as he murmured to himself, 'When ye are brought
before kings and princes for my name's sake.--I dare not hold my
tongue, sir. I am as one risen from the dead,'--and