But while employed in this pleasant way, I happened to glance again through my leafy screen, and then I distinguished the figure in the distance as that of a man walking rapidly. He was coming down the mill-stream meadow toward the wooden bridge, carrying a fishing rod, but clearly not intent on angling. For instead of following the course of the stream, he was keeping quite away from it, avoiding also the footpath, or, at any rate, seeming to prefer the long shadows of the trees and the tufted places. This made me look at him, and very soon I shrank into my nest and watched him. As he came nearer any one could tell that he was no village workman, bolder than the rest, and venturesome to cross the “Murder-bridge” in his haste to be at home. The fishing rod alone was enough to show this when it came into clearer view; for our good people, though they fished sometimes, only used rough rods of their own making, without any varnish or brass thing for the line. And the man was of different height and walk and dress from any of our natives. “Who can he be?” I whispered to myself, as my heart began to beat heavily, and then seemed almost to stop, as it answered, “This is the man who was in the churchyard.” Ignoble as it was, and contemptible, and vile, and traitorous to all duty, my first thought was about my own escape; for I felt that if this man saw me there he would rush up the hill and murder me. Within pistol-shot of the very place where my grandfather had been murdered--a lonely place, an unholy spot, and I was looking at the hand that did it. The thought of this made me tremble so, though well aware that my death might ensue from a twig on the rustle, or a leaf upon the flutter, that my chance of making off unseen was gone ere I could seize it. For now the man was taking long strides over the worn-out planks of the bridge, disdaining the hand-rail, and looking upward, as if to shun sight of the footing. Advancing thus, he must have had his gaze point-blank upon my lair of leafage; but, luckily for me, there was gorse upon the ridge, and bracken and rag-thistles, so that none could spy up and through the footing of my lurking-place. But if any person could have spied me, this man was the one to do it. So carefully did he scan the distance and inspect the foreground, as if he were resolved that no eye should be upon him while he was doing what he came to do. And he even drew forth a little double telescope, such as are called “binoculars,” and fixed it on the thicket which hid me from him, and then on some other dark places.