“Oh!” growled Rodd, between his teeth. “If you weren’t such a poor, weak, helpless-looking chap I’d hit you on the nose. How dare you speak to me like that?”
He raised his hand as if to strike, but there was a ring in his words which had thrilled the fugitive, who to Rodd’s astonishment caught the hand in his, and quick as thought pressed it to his lips, and then dashed into the water and splashed his way to the mouth of the hole. The next moment the disturbed stream was the only trace left, for the fugitive had disappeared.
The young fisher stood gazing blankly at the low dark mouth of the hole, listening with every nerve on the strain for some sound from the hiding-place to strike his ear; but there was none. From behind, though, there came a loud voice, shouting—
“Here, this way; up by the stream!”
In an instant Rodd was full of action. Turning his back to the hole across the pool, he began to whip the surface with such effect that at the third cast there was a quick rise and he was fast in by far the biggest trout he had caught that day, though small enough all the same; and with knit brows he was playing it carefully just as a redcoat, followed by three or four more, came up at the double to the exit end of the pool and halted to stare at him wonderingly.
“Hi, young fellow!” shouted the leader, whose stripes betokened the sergeant. “What are you doing here?”
Rodd, whose heart was thumping against his ribs from excitement, did not so much as raise his eyes from the surface of the pool, but with teeth set, lips pursed up, and brows heavily knit, kept on playing his fish, paying not the slightest heed to the speaker and his companions.
“Fishing, eh?” said the sergeant, who, in spite of his important errand, could not take his eyes from the darting trout. “I say, we are after an escaped prisoner, and he came somewhere up here. Which way has he gone?”
Rodd did not take his eyes from the frantic darting of the fish, but gave line in silence as it flashed through the water to the far side of the pool, while the soldiers grounded arms and looked on with the deepest interest.
“Prisoners escaped,” said the sergeant loudly, as he, too, still gazed at the rushings of the trout—“Frenchman—came up this way—Yes, a big ’un, youngster—Mind! You’ll lose him!—One was quite a lad, and—Well done! You have got him yet!—We saw him run up this way, and—Well done!—You have handled a fly-rod before—Did you see anything of him?”