Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Templeton and I were lounging by the clear limestone stream whichcrossed his park and wound away round wooded hills toward the distantSevern. A lovelier fishing morning sportsman never saw. A soft gray under-roof of cloud slid on before a soft west wind, andhere and there a stray gleam of sunlight shot into the vale across thepurple mountain-tops, and awoke into busy life the denizens of the water,already quickened by the mysterious electric influences of the lastnight’s thunder-shower. The long-winged cinnamon-flies spunand fluttered over the pools; the sand-bees hummed merrily round theirburrows in the marly bank; and delicate iridescent ephemeræ roseby hundreds from the depths, and, dropping their shells, floated away,each a tiny Venus Anadyomene, down the glassy ripples of the reaches. Every moment a heavy splash beneath some overhanging tuft of milfoilor water hemlock proclaimed the death-doom of a hapless beetle who haddropped into the stream beneath; yet still we fished and fished, andcaught nothing, and seemed utterly careless about catching anything;till the old keeper who followed us, sighing and shrugging his shoulders,broke forth into open remonstrance:
“Excuse my liberty, gentlemen, but what ever is the matterwith you and master, sir? I never did see you miss so many honestrises before.”
“It is too true,” said Templeton to me with a laugh. “I must confess I have been dreaming instead of fishing the wholemorning. But what has happened to you, who are not as apt as Iam to do nothing by trying to do two things at once?”
“My hand may well be somewhat unsteady; for to tell the truth,I sat up all last night writing.”
“A hopeful preparation for a day’s fishing in limestonewater! But what can have set you on writing all night after sobusy and talkative an evening as the last, ending too, as it did, somewhereabout half-past twelve?”
“Perhaps the said talkative evening itself; and I suspect,if you will confess the truth, you will say that your morning’smeditations are running very much in the same channel.”
“Lewis,” said he, after a pause, “go up to thehall, and bring some luncheon for us down to the lower waterfall.”
“And a wheelbarrow to carry home the fish, sir?”
“If you wish to warm yourself, certainly. And now, mygood fellow,” said he, as the old keeper toddled away up the park,“I will open my heart—a process for which I have but fewopportunities here—to an old college friend. I am disturbedand saddened by last night’s talk and by last night’s guest.”
“By the American professor? How, in the name of Englishexclusiveness, did such a rampantly heterodox spiritual guerilla invadethe respectabilities and conservatisms of Herefordshire?”
“He was returning from a tour through Wales, and had introductionsto me from some Manchester friends of mine, to avail himself of whichI found he had gone some thirty miles out of his way.”
“Complimentary to you, at least.”
“To Lady Jane, I suspect, rather than to me; for he told mebroadly enough that all the flattering attentions which he had receivedin Manchester—where, you know, all such prophets are receivedwith open arms, their only credentials being that, whatsoever they believe,they shall not believe the Bible—had not given him the pleasurewhich he had received from that one introduction to what he called ‘theinner hearth-life of the English landed aristocracy.’ Butwhat did you think of him?”
“Do you really wish to know?”
“I do.”
“Then, honestly, I never heard so much magniloquent unwisdomtalked in the same sp