The Water-Finders

---------
----
Willowton is a village of some seventeen thousand population, large enough for the inhabitants to talk of going up the town when they mean the broad main street which stands on a gentle slope leading from the railway station to the church. This street, which is paved at the sides with nice old-world, ankle-twisting cobbles, boasts of two drapers', a chemist's, a saddler's, grocer's, and bootmaker's shops. Away in the less aristocratic parts of the village are the butchers and bakers, and the miscellaneous stores so dear to the country housewives. About the middle of the town, in the very widest part, is the bridge, and close to the bridge itself is the Wild Swan public-house, or rather hotel , as it calls itself. The little stream that runs under the bridge comes along through miles of cool meadows, now golden with buttercups, for it is May. It comes through many gardens and orchards, now white with apple blossom; and when it leaves the bridge it burrows underground for some little distance, and reappears at the foot of the cottage gardens, to lose itself in pleasant meandering through more flowery meadows, till it passes out of the ken of Heigham folks, and out of our story's picture.
It was noon, and the sun was hot and the stream was low. There had been no rain for several weeks. The March winds had blown the seeds about; the wheat even drooped in the fields; April had refused her usual showers, and there was a dry, parched look everywhere while yet it was only May. Three men hung over the bridge, lazily resting their elbows on the parapet, and looking down into the water below at a large trout that was lying under a stone, waiting his opportunity to make his way further upstream to a deeper pool under the garden bank. Of these three loafers, as the neighbours called them, one was a strong, well-built young man of one or two-and-twenty. His flushed face betrayed the fact that he had already visited the Wild Swan over the way; his great strong limbs were loosely knit; his big hands showed little signs of work; his lazy blue eyes looked as if they had never done anything more harmful or more useful than watch for trout.