"Why, I doubt not you will obtain some information regarding the gentleman calling himself Wolf," replied Beauchamp; "but if you do, how do you intend to proceed?"
"Hunt him down as I would a wolf," answered Ned Hayward.
"Then pray let me share the sport," rejoined Beauchamp.
"Oh! certainly, certainly," said Ned Hayward; "I'll give the view halloo as soon as I have found him; and so now, good night, for I am somewhat sleepy."
"Goodnight, goodnight!" answered Beauchamp; and Ned Hayward rang for a bed-candle, a boot-jack, a pair of slippers, and sundry other things that he wanted, which were brought instantly, and with great good will. Had he asked for a nightcap it would have been provided with the same alacrity; for those were days in which nightcaps were furnished by every host to every guest; though now (alas! for the good old times) no landlord ever thinks that a guest will stay long enough in his house to make it worth while to attend to his head-gear. But Ned Hayward needed no nightcap, for he never wore one, and therefore his demands did not at all overtax his host's stock.
CHAPTER V.
The old Mill.
It was just in the gray of the morning, and the silver light of dawn was stealing through the deep glens of the wood, brightening the dewy filaments that busy insects had spun across and across the grass, and shining in long, glistening lines, upon the broad clear stream. It was a lovely stream as ever the eye of meditation rested on, or thoughtful angler walked beside; and from about two miles beyond Slingsby Park to within half a mile of the small town of Tarningham, it presented an endless variety of quiet English scenery, such as does the heart of man good to look upon. In one part it was surrounded by high hills, not unbroken by jagged rocks and lofty banks, and went on tumbling in miniature cascades and tiny rapids. At another place it flowed on in greater tranquillity through green meadows, flanked on either hand by tall, stately trees, at the distance of eighty or ninety yards from the banks; not in trim rows, all ranged like rank and file upon parades, but straggling out as chance or taste had decided, sometimes grouping into masses, sometimes protruding far towards the stream, sometimes receding coyly into the opening of a little dell. Then again the river dashed on at a more hurried rate through a low copse, brawling as it went over innumerable shelves of rock and masses of stone, or banks of gravel, which attempted to obstruct its course; and nearer still to the town it flowed through turfy banks, slowly and quietly, every now and then diversified by a dashing ripple over a shallow, and a tumble into a deep pool.
It was in the gray of the morning, then, that a man in a velveteen jacket was seen walking slowly along by the margin, at a spot where the river was in a sort of middle state, neither so fierce and restive as it seemed amongst the hills, nor so tranquil and sluggish as in the neighbourhood of the little town. There were green fields around; and numerous trees and copses approaching sometimes very close to the water, but sometimes breaking away to a considerable distance, and generally far enough off for the angler to throw a fly without hooking the branches around. Amongst some elms, and walnuts, and Huntingdon poplars on the right bank, was an old square tower of very rough stone, gray and cold-looking, with some ivy up one side, clustering round the glassless window. It might have been mistaken for the ruin of some ancient castle of no great extent, had it not been for the axle-tree and some of the spokes and fellies of a dilapidated water-wheel projecting over the river, and at once announcing for what purposes the building had been formerly used, and that they had long ceased. There was still a little causeway and small stone bridge of a single arch spanning a rivulet that here joined the stream, and from a doorway near the wheel still stretched a frail plank to the other side of the dam, which, being principally constructed of rude layers of rock, remained entire, and kept up the water so as to form an artificial cascade. Early as was the hour, some matutinal trout, who, having risen by times and perhaps taken a long swim before breakfast, felt hungry and sharpset, were attempting to satisfy their voracious maws by snapping at a number of fawn-coloured moths which imprudently trusted themselves too near the surface of the water. The religious birds were singing their sweet hymns all around, and a large goatsucker whirled by on his long wings, depriving the trout of many a delicate fly before it came within reach of the greedy jaws that were waiting for it below the ripple.
But what was the man doing while fish, flies, and birds were thus engaged? Marry he was engaged in a very curious and mysterious occupation. With a slow step and a careful eye fixed upon the glassy surface beneath him, he walked along the course of the current down towards the park paling that you see there upon the left. Was he admiring the speckled tenants of the river? Was he admiring his own reflected image on the shining mirror of the stream? He might be doing either, or both; but, nevertheless, he often put his finger and thumb into the pocket of a striped waistcoat; pulled out some small round balls, about the size of a pea or a little larger, marvellously like one of those boluses which doctors are sometimes fain to prescribe, and chemists right willing to furnish, but which patients find it somewhat difficult to swallow. These he dropped one by one into the water, wherever he found a quiet place, and thus proceeded till he had come within about three hundred yards of the park wall. There he stopped the administration of these pills; and then, walking a little further, sat down by the side of the river, in the very midst of a tall clump of rushes.