He might have remained there for a long time, struggling with his good and evil natures, but he was disturbed by the sudden entrance of the bear and Jake into his solitude. The beast had a particular affection for the pool in the dell, and preferred it to all others for its daily bath. But no sooner did it set eyes on Joel, than it began to growl and bristle up with anger. "Hulloa, Master Joel, back again to the dale," cried Jake. "Back again," he replied with assumed cheerfulness. "But it seems as though I've found an enemy waiting for me." The rat-catcher tightened his hand on the chain. "Big Ben doesn't often show his teeth. Maybe you'd better hook it, master; seems as though he'd got a memory, eh?" Joel laughed, but took the wiser part of withdrawing before the creature had strung up its ponderous limbs to deal him a blow, which would have ended his temptations for that day and many days to follow. CHAPTER XVII THE WRESTLING MATCH Joel looked in at Greystones on his way to the Shepherds' Meet. He would rather have passed the house by, for he was in no mood to talk to Mistress Lynn, but he did not like to seem discourteous to one who had been as kind to him as she had been. "Why, Joel, man," she exclaimed, "thee's grown handsomer than ever. Thee always was a bonny lad, but thee'd better have a care now, or all the lasses will be making sheeps-eyes at thee up hill and down dale." "You look very well," said Barbara. He glanced from the old woman to her great-granddaughter, and smiled, throwing off the impatience that he felt with an effort. "It's you who have grown handsomer, not I, Mistress Lynn," he replied. "You look nearly as young as Barbara. If you put that grand nightcap you're wearing on her head, she'd be the image of you, and you of her." "Hoots-toots! and me going on a hundred!" She shook her finger at him. "I's too old to have my senses turned with such babblement. I was like Barbara once, but not in your day, my lad. It's to her you should be paying your compliments, not to her great-granny. Your grandfather gave me all I ever wanted." She made him sit down by the four-poster, with his face to the windows, so that she could see him well. "I couldn't pay Barbara a greater compliment," he said smoothly, yet with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, for he saw the drift of her mind, "than by likening her to you. You and she are the handsomest, bonniest pair that I've set sight on since I last saw you both." "Get away with you, Master Joel; you've got far too sly a tongue for simple folk like the lassie and me."