But, one fateful day, a distant cousin of Runridge’s arrived on a visit—a sedate, ponderous woman, very black as to brows and eyes, and with a hard, shiny face whose colour seemed all on the surface, like red paint. She never went away again, for within the month she became Mrs. Runridge. From that day, for peace and quiet’s sake, the old ferryman and I pursued our ancient courses only by stealth. Fortunately Mrs. Runridge had a genius for household economy, which led her to eschew the village shop, and took her off with her basket at least once a week to Stavisham and its cheaper wares. This was always our opportunity; and regularly on the town market-days, when Mrs. Runridge and her basket had been safely stowed into the carrier’s cart and it had turned the distant bend of the lane, the little green wherry set forth over the shining tide with its self-congratulatory crew, bent on visiting the ‘harns,’ or looking for reed-warblers’ nests, or anything else that might fit the occasion. To-day we went up on the full tide, and turned into the little creek where the kingfishers have their nests. It has been one of those dead-still, cloudless days, that so often come in mid-March just before the gales of the equinox—a halcyon day, in very truth. As our little craft sped up the glittering pathway of the waters, hardly a whisper sounded in the dense jungle of reeds that flanks the river here on either side. The treetops stood motionless against the sky—one clear, blue arch except where just above the horizon a series of white clouds peered over the hill-tops like a row of beckoning hands. The willows on the banks were full of yellow blossom in which the bees crowded; their soft music was with us wherever we went. Larks carolled overhead. Thrushes, blackbirds, hedge-sparrows sang in every bush. There was a great cawing and dawing from the rookeries, where the black companies had returned for the season, and were busy furbishing up their nests. We drove our boat’s prow through the willow branches that all but hid the entrance to the creek, then let her drift idly down the narrow way until we gained the broader basin near the footbridge, and moored her to an overhanging branch.