Once twin pairs of grinders turned here, and the last aspect of these is even more uncouth than that of the water-wheels that drove them. Their roofs are blown away and the rollers beneath are cased in rust and moss. Willows and grasses and the flowers of the waste flourish above their ruins; broom, dock, rush, choke the old watercourses; crowfoot mantles the stagnant pools that remain; and all is chaos, wreck and collapse. For here spreads the scene of a human failure, the grave of an unsuccessful enterprise. Its secret may still be read in dank strips of old proclamations hanging upon notice-boards within the ruins, and telling that men made gunpowder here; but those precautions necessary to establish the factory upon a site remote from any populous district indirectly achieved its ruin, for profits were swallowed by the cost of carriage from a situation so inaccessible. At gloaming of an autumn day one living thing only moved amid the old powder-mills, and he felt no emotion in presence of that scene, for it was the playground of his life; his eyes had opened within a few score yards of it. Young David Daccombe knew every hole and corner of the various workshops, and had his own different goblin names for the quaint tools still lumbering many a rotting floor, and the massive machinery, left as not worth cost of removal. Mystery lurked in countless dark recesses, and Davey had made secret discoveries too and was lord of tremendous, treasured wonders hidden within the labyrinths of these crumbling mills. But at this moment all things were forgotten before a supreme and new experience. The boy had just caught his first trout, and a little fingerling fish now flapped and gasped out its life under his admiring eyes. Davey was a plain child, with a narrow brow and hard mouth. Now he smelt the trout, patted it, chuckled over his capture, then casting down an osier rod, with its hook and a disgorged worm halfway up the gut, he prepared to rush home and display his triumph to his mother. As he climbed up from the stream and reached a little bridge that crossed it, his small face puckered into a fear, for he heard himself called harshly, knew the voice and felt little love for the speaker. Out of the deepening gloom under the fir trees a young man appeared with a gun under his arm. “Be that you, Davey, an’ did I see a rod? If so, I’ll break it in pieces, I warn ’e. Fishin’ season ended last Saturday, an’ here’s the keeper’s awn brother poachin’. A nice thing!” “Oh, Dick! I’ve catched one! First ever I really catched. Won’t mother be brave an’ glad to eat un? Ban’t very big, but a real trout. I be just takin’ it home-along.” “You’ll do no such thing, you little rascal. Give it to me this instant moment, or else I’ll make you.” Richard Daccombe approached and towered over his brother. It was easy to see that they were near of kin.