"Charity," said Dane gravely, "suspecteth nothing. Don't you know that trout rise most freely just before the dusk?"
"You are not sufficiently clever to set your wits against a woman's," she declared.
Dane laughed, a trifle grimly; and the girl, momentarily startled by something in his merriment, decided that she must have been mistaken; but she abandoned the subject with some abruptness.
That very evening, perhaps sent forth by fate, because much depended upon his fishing, Thomas Chatterton took up his rod and landing net, and, as he did not return by nightfall, his wife once more despatched Dane in search of him.
"I think you know where to find him; and I wish I did, for he has only to take two more trout to win," Lilian added significantly.
Dane proceeded by the shortest way to the big elbow pool, but it was almost dark when he reached it. There had been heavy rain, and all the firs which loomed through thin white mist were dripping. The water came down beneath them thick with the peat of the moorlands in incipient flood. Dane could hear its hoarse growl about the boulders studding the tail rapid, and surmised that there ought to be several trout on the poacher's line. Having, nevertheless, no desire to surprise his host red-handed, he did not immediately proceed toward it, but sat upon the driest stone he could find, listening for his coming. There was no sound but the clamor of the river and the heavy splashing of moisture from the boughs above, some of which trickled down his neck, until he heard a rattle of falling stones, and a shadowy figure, which he guessed was Chatterton's, crawled down toward the alder roots.
A splash was followed by a hoarse exclamation as the man slipped into the water up to the knee; then Dane heard the thud of a flung out fish, and sat very still, for it would clearly be injudicious to present himself just then. He noticed a minute twinkle of brightness among the boulders across the pool which puzzled him. It was too small for the light of a lantern, and he remembered nothing that shone in just the same fashion. While he wondered what it could be, another dark object rose beside the alder, gripping what looked like a heavy stick.
"I'm thinking I have ye noo!" a gruff voice exclaimed. "Ye sorrowful wastrel, stealing a puir man's fish!"