"Hah! at last!" cried the Major, striking sharply. "Home this time, Di. I believe it's that big trout with the distorted tail-fin. That's right, my fine fellow; run, but I think I have you. No more lovely May-flies to be sucked down your capacious gullet. I have you, my tyrant of the waters. I'll bring him in ten yards lower down, my dear. Mind and get your net well under him, and don't touch him with the ring." There followed five minutes' playing of the gallant fish, which leaped twice out of the water in its desperate efforts to escape, and then it was gently reeled in and lifted out on the stones. "Best this season, my dear. A beauty," said the Major, transferring the speckled beauty to his creel, and preparing for another throw. It was suppertime with the trout in the twilight, and they were feeding eagerly now, as the Major began once more--casting his line, and chatting the while to his child, who stood just beside him on his left. "They're pretty busy bringing the machinery over to the mine, I see." "Indeed?" "Yes; and the men told me that Mr What's-his-name, Reed, is down again." Dinah drew a faint breath and exhaled it in something like a sigh. "Reed--bad name for a man of trust. I say, Dinah, I don't like that other fellow, that man Sturgess, at all." Dinah's hands grasped the landing-net handle convulsively. "He is offensive. A coarse, overbearing, brutal sort of fellow. I don't like the way he looks at me. I suppose in his eyes a man living down here in a cottage cannot be a gentleman. I shall have to give him a setting down. He is not coming to lord it over us. I saw him fishing below here the other day." "No, no, don't speak to him," cried Dinah hastily. "Nonsense! I have commanded bigger and uglier fellows than he, my dear. The fellow's insolent, and I saw him twice over clambering round the rocks and staring into the garden. I won't have it. He shall respect my boundaries, and--Ah! good evening, Mr Reed. Down again, then! What is the last news in London?" Clive Reed had come upon them suddenly from behind one of the angles of the perpendicular rock which rose up from the narrow pathway beside the river, and was quite unnoticed until he was close at hand. Dinah turned pale as death as she uttered a low gasp, and for the moment looked as if she were about to turn and run. "Good evening, Miss Gurdon," said Clive. He took off his hat to the Major's daughter as he spoke; and then, as the fisherman released the hand which had been warmly grasped, the young man stood hesitating; but as Dinah made no sign, he let it fall to his side. "I have been expecting to see something of you," continued the Major. "Have you been to the cottage?" "No," said Clive, in a quiet, constrained tone, and to Dinah's great relief he did not look her way, but seemed to stare about him strangely. "I did not call. I did not expect to meet you here."