He was seated beneath an apple tree, on the bank of the stream in deep
conversation with a most remarkable old man, who was fishing industriously
with the very rod The Seraph so lately had bewailed. He was an
astonishingly old man, with hair and beard as white as wool, wreathing a
face as pink as the apple-blossoms that fell about him. Cautiously we drew
near, quite unobserved by the two who seemed utterly absorbed in their
occupation of watching the line as it dipped into the stream. Now we could
see that the old man's clothes were ragged, and that he had taken off his
boots to ease his tired feet, the toes of which protruded from his socks,
even pinker than his face.
He was speaking in a full soft voice with an accent which was new to us.
"Yon trout," said he, "was in a terrible frizz wi' the hook gnawing his
vitals, and he swum about among the reeds near the bank in a manner to
harrer your feelings. The line got tangled in the growing stuff, and I, so
quick as an otter, pounced on him, and had him on the bank afore 'ee could
say 'scat,' and there he lies breathing his last, and blessing me no doubt
for relieving him in his shameful state."
"I fink he's weally my twout," said The Seraph. "I caught him first you
see."
"That pint might take a terr'ble understanding lawyer to unravel," replied
the old man, "but sooner than quarrel in such an unsporting fashion, I'll
give 'ee the trout, though I had had a notion of roasting him to my own
breakfast."
The Seraph stroked the glistening side of the recumbent trout admiringly;
he poked his plump forefinger into it's quivering pink gill. The result was
startling. The trout leaped into the air with a flourish of silvery tail;
then fell floundering on The Seraph's bare knees. Our junior, seized with
one of his unaccountable impulses, grasped him by the middle and hurled him
into the stream. A second more and the trout was gone, leaving only a thin
line of red to mark his passing. Angel and I ran forward to protect The
Seraph if need be from the consequences of his hardy act; but the old man
was smiling placidly.
"That trout," he said, "is so gleeful to get away from his captivity as I
be to escape from the work'us."
"Oh, did you run away from the workhouse?" we cried, in chorus, gathering
around him, "Have you run far?" And we looked at his broken boots.
"I ban't a dareful man," he replied, "that would run down the road in
daylight for the whole nation to see, and I be terr'ble weak in the legs,
so I just crept out in the night, so quiet as a star-beam, and sheltered in
the orchard yonder, till I seed the rod fairly put in my hand by the
Almighty, that I mid strike manna out of the stream, like old Moses, so to
speak."
"You're a funny man," said Angel. "You've a rum way of talking."
"I come from Devon by natur," he answered, "and my tongue still has the
twist o't though I haven't seed the moors these sixty years."
"You must be pretty old."
"Old! I be so aged that I can remember my grandmother when she was but a
rosy-cheeked slip of a gal."
We stared in awe before such antiquity.