Before May was ended, she knew old Izaak almost as well as Denzil, and had learnt to throw a fly, and to choose the likeliest spot and the happiest hour of the day for a good trout; had learnt to watch the clouds and cloud-shadows with an angler’s keen interest; and had amused herself with the manufacture of an artificial minnow, upon Walton’s recipe, devoting careful labour and all the resources of her embroidery basket—silks and silver thread—to perfecting the delicate model, which, when completed, she presented smilingly to Denzil, who was strangely moved by so childish a toy, and had some difficulty in suppressing his emotion as he held the glistening silken fish in his hands, and thought how her tapering fingers had caressed it, and how much of her very self seemed, as he watched her, to have been enwrought with the fabric. So poor, so trivial a thing; but her first gift! If she had tossed him a flower, plucked that moment, he would have treasured it all his life; but this, which had cost her so much careful work, was far more than any casual blossom. Something of the magnetism of her mind had passed into the silver thread drawn so daintily through her rosy fingers—something of the soft light in her eyes had mixed with the blended colours of the silk. Foolish fancies these, but in the gravest man’s love there is a vein of folly. Sometimes they rode with Sir John, and in this way explored the neighbourhood, which was rich in historical associations—some of the remote past, as when King John kept Christmas at Brill; but chiefly of those troubled times through which Sir John Kirkland had lived, an active participator in that deadly drama. He showed them the site of the garrison at Brill, and trod every foot of the earthworks to demonstrate how the hill had been fortified. He had commanded in the defence against Hampden and his greencoats—that regiment of foot raised in his pastoral shire, whose standard bore on one side the watchword of the Parliament, “God with us,” and on the other Hampden’s own device, “_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_.” “’Twas a legend to frighten some of us, who had no Latin,” said Sir John; “but we put his bumpkin greencoats to the rout, and trampled that insolent flag in the mire.”