All this time Ned Hayward's mind was not unoccupied. He saw every thing that was passing about him, and meditated upon it without knowing that he was meditating. The sky was still quite gray when he set out, but presently the morning began to hang out her banners of purple and gold to welcome the monarch of day, and Ned Hayward said to himself, "How wonderfully beautiful all this is, and what a fine ordination is it that every change in nature should produce some variety of beauty." Then he remarked upon the trees, and the birds, and the meadows, and the reflections of the sky in a clear, smooth part of the river, and with somewhat of a painter's mind, perceived the beautiful harmony that is produced by the effect that one colour has upon another by its side. And then he passed a little village church, with the steeple shrouded in ivy, and it filled his mind full of quiet and peaceful images, and simple rural life (with a moral to it all), and his thoughts ran on to a thousand scenes of honest happiness, till he had the game at skittles and the maypole on the green up before him as plain as if it were all real; and the ivy and two old yews carried him away to early times when that ancient church was new. Heaven knows how far his fancy went galloping!--through the whole history of England at least. But all these reveries went out of his head almost as soon as the objects that excited them, and then, as he went through some neat hedgerows and pleasant corn-fields, which promised well in their green freshness for an abundant harvest, he began to think of partridges and an occasional pheasant lying under a holly-bush, and pointing dogs and tumbling birds, a full game-bag, and a capital dinner, with a drowsy evening afterwards. Good Heaven! what a thing it is to be young, and in high health, and in high spirits; how easy the load of life sits upon one; how insignificant are its cares to its enjoyments; every moment has its flitting dream; every hour its becoming enjoyment, if we choose to seek it; every flower, be it bitter or be it sweet, be it inodorous or be it perfumed, has its nectarial fall of honeyed drops, ripe for the lip that will vouchsafe to press it. But years, years, they bring on the autumn of the heart, when the bright and blooming petals have passed away, when the dreams have vanished with the light slumbers of early years, and every thing is in the seed for generations to come; we feel ourselves the husks of the earth, and find that it is time to fall away, and give place to the bloom and blossom of another epoch.
Our friend, however, if not in the budding time of life, had nothing of the sere and yellow leaf about him; he was one of those men who was calculated to carry on the day-dream of boyhood, even beyond its legitimate limit; nothing fretted him, nothing wore him, few things grieved him. It required the diamond point to make a deep impression, and though he reflected the lights that fell upon him from other objects, it was but the more powerful rays that penetrated into the depth, and that not very frequently. Thus on he went upon his way, and what he had got to after partridges and field-swamps, and matters of such kind, Heaven only knows. He might be up in the moon for aught I can tell, or in the Indies, or riding astride upon a comet, or in any other position the least likely for a man to place himself in, except when aided by the wings of imagination; and yet, strange to say, Ned Hayward had not the slightest idea that he had any imagination at all. He believed himself to be the most simple jog-trot, matter-of-fact creature in all the world; but to return, he was indulging in all sorts of fantasies, just when a little path between two high hedges opened out upon a narrow meadow, by the side of the river at a spot just opposite the old mill, and not more than forty or fifty yards distant from the door thereof. He saw the old mill and the stream, but saw nothing else upon my word, and thinking to himself,
"What a picturesque ruin that is, it looks like some feudal castle built beside the water, parting two hostile barons' domains. What the deuce can it have been?"
Doubt with him always led to examination, so without more ado, he crossed over the open space with his usual quick step, entered the mill, looked about him, satisfied himself in a minute as to what had been its destination, and then gazed out of the windows, first up the stream, and next down. Up the stream he saw some swallows skimming over the water, the first that summer had brought to our shores; and, moreover, a sedate heron, with its blue back appearing over some reeds, one leg in the water, and one raised to its breast. When he looked down, however, he perceived the gentleman I have described, dropping some pellets into the water, and he thought "That's a curious operation, what can he be about?"
The next minute, however, the legitimate wooer of the fishes turned his face partly towards the mill, and Ned Hayward murmured, "Ah ha, Master Wolf, alias Ste Gimlet, I have you now, I think." And issuing forth, he dogged him down the bank as I have before described, till at length, choosing his moment dexterously, he grasped him by the collar, in such a manner, that if he had had the strength of Hercules, he would have found it a more difficult matter to escape, than to kill forty Hydras, or clean fifty Augean stables.
"Hocussing the fish!" said the prisoner, in answer to one of Captain Hayward's first intimations of what he thought of his proceedings. "I don't know what you mean by hocussing the fish--I've got a few dead 'uns out of the river, that's all; and no great harm, I should think, just to make a fry."
"Ay, my good friend," replied Ned Hayward, "dead enough, I dare say they were when you got them; but I'm afraid we must have a coroner's inquest upon them, and I do not think the verdict will be 'Found drowned.' What I mean, my man, is that you have poisoned them--a cunning trick, but one that I know as well as your name or my own."
"And what the devil is your name?" asked the captive, trying to twist himself round, so as at least to get a blow or a kick at his captor.
"Be quiet--be quiet!" answered Ned Hayward, half strangling him in his collar. "My name is my own property, and I certainly will not give it to you; but your own you shall have, if you like. You are called Ste Gimlet or I am mistaken, but better known at night by the name of Wolf."
The man muttered an angry curse, and Ned Hayward continued,