Well, the river ran very suent through the water-meadows below my village, and there was wonnerful fine stickles and reaches for trout, and proper deep pools for salmon. And on a fine night in June, with the moonlight bright as day, I was down beside it a bit after one o'clock, busy about a little matter of night-lines. I meant to make an experiment, too, because I'd read in a book how the salmon will come up to stare if you hold a bright light over 'em. They'll goggle up at you and get dazed by the light, and then you can spear 'em as easy as picking blackberries. 'Twas news to me, but a thing very well to know if true, and I got a bull's-eye lantern to prove it.
Through a hayfield—half cut, 'twas—I went, where the moon throwed a shadow beside each uplifted pook, and the air was heavy with the scent, and a corncrake somewhere was making a noise like sharpening a scythe. A few trout were rising at the night moths, but nothing moved of any account in the open, and I pushed forward where the hayfield ended at the edge of the woods. There, just fifty yards inside the trees, was one of the properest pools on the river; and, having set my night-lines for a trout or two higher up, I came down to the salmon pool, spear in hand, and lit my lantern and got on a rock in the mid-channel, where 'twas clear and still, with nought but the oily twist and twirl of the currents running deep beneath me.
I felt so bold as a lion that night, for Squire Champernowne, of Woodcotes, had died at dawn, and the countryside was all in a commotion, and I knowed, what with talking and drinking in the pubs and running about all day, that not a keeper would be to work after dark. A very good man had been the Squire, though peppery and uncertain in his temper, and quick to take offence, but honest and well-liked by all who worked for him. 'Twas one of they tragical moments, long expected but none the less exciting, when death came, and I felt certain sure that I should have the river to myself till morning.
But I was wrong. Looking upstream by good chance afore I got to work, I saw a man in the meadow moonlight. There he was, making for the woods. He was following the path I followed, and in five minutes I saw that he'd be on the river-bank within ten yards of me. Of course, I thought the chap was after me and had tracked me down. It astonished me a good bit to mark him, and I saw he was a tall, slim man, much lighter than me, though very near the same height. He didn't tally with my knowledge of any of the Woodcotes keepers, so I felt better and hoped as it might be a stranger, or a lunatic, or somebody as wouldn't be feeling any interest in me. But I had to shift, of course, so I nipped off my rock and went under the bank where the ivy fell over at the tail of the salmon pool. 'Twas a deep, sandy-bottomed reach, with the bank dipping in steeply o' one side and a shelving, pebbly ridge the other. The river narrowed at the bottom of the pool and fell over a fall. So there I went, and looked through the ivy unseen and watched my gentleman along the river-path.
He came, and the light of the moon shone on him between two trees, so that I could mark who 'twas; and then I seed the man of all others in the world I'd least have counted to see. For there, if you please, went young Mister Cranston Champernowne, the nephew of the dead man, and thought to be heir to Woodcotes! For Squire never married, but he had a good few nephews, and two was his special favourites: this one and his brother, young Lawrence Champernowne. They were the sons of General Sir Arthur Champernowne, a famous fighter who'd got the Victoria Cross in India, and carried half the alphabet after his name.
Well, there stood the young youth, and even in the owl-light I could see he was a bit troubled of spirit. He looked about him, moved nervously, and then fetched something out of his pocket. 'Twas black and shining, and I felt pretty sure 'twas a bottle; but I only had time to catch one glimpse of it, for he lifted his arm and flung it in the pool. It flashed and was gone, and then, before the moony circles on the water had got to the bank, the man was off. He walked crooked and shaky, and something told me as the young fellow had done terrible wrong and felt it.
Whatever 'twas he'd hid, it lay now in the deepest part of the river, and that, no doubt, he knew. But I knowed more. The bottom where his bottle was lying happened to be fine sand with a clear lift to the little beach; and so, given a proper tool, 'twas easy enough to rake over the river-bed and fetch up anything of any size on that smooth surface.
Of course, my first thought was to fetch that bottle out of the water; but then a cold shiver went through me, and I told myself to mind my own business and leave Cranston Champernowne to mind his. Yet somehow I couldn't do that. There was a sporting side to it, and a man like me wasn't the sort to sit down tamely afore such a great adventure. So I said to myself: "I'll have that bottle!"
My wits ran quick in them days, as was natural to a night-hawk, and I only waited till the young chap was off through the woods, and then nipped back into the grass field, fetched a haymaker's rake, made fast a brave stone to 'un, got my night-lines up, and soon lowered down the rake over the spot where the bottle went in. At the second drag I got him, and there, sure enough, was the thing that Mister Champernowne had throwed in the pool. But it weren't a bottle by no means. Instead, I found a black, tin, waterproof canister a foot long; and, working at it, the lid soon came off. Inside was one piece of paper and no more. That was all the canister hid; and the next thing I done was to light up my lantern and see what wonderful matter it could be as the young man was at such pains to do away with so careful. For Woodcotes House was two mile from the river, and Cranston Champernowne had been at all this trouble, you see, on the very day of his uncle's death.
Well, I soon found out all about it, for the thing was simple enough. The paper was a will, or, as I heard long after, a thing called a codicil—a contrivance what you add to a will. And it revoked and denied everything as the dead man had wrote before. In a few words the paper swept away Squire Champernowne's former wills and testaments, and left Woodcotes to Lawrence Champernowne, the son of General Sir Arthur and the brother of the chap as had just flung the paper in the river.