Will of the Mill | Page 3

oaks, and hawk-moths that
darted through the garden, the only level place about the bottom of the
glen. Fishing too--the artist who came down was only too glad to make
them friends, seeing how they knew the homes of the wily trout in the
rocky nooks below the great fall down by the sluice, where the waters
rushed from beneath the splashing wheel; and in the deep, deep depths
of the great dam where the waters were gathered as they came down

from the hills above, forming a vast reserve that never failed, but kept
up the rattle and clatter of looms from year to year, and formed a place
where the boys early learned to dive and swim, making their plunges
from one of the ferny shelves above. They were pretty high, some of
these shelves, and required a cool head and steady nerve to mount to
them in safety; but they had been improved in time. By a little coaxing,
James Drinkwater had been induced by the boys to climb with them on
the one side or the other of the gorge, armed with hammer and cold
chisel, to cut a step here, and knock out a stone there, so that most of
the shelves formed by the strata of limestone had been made accessible,
and glorious places to ascend to for those who loved to scramble.
One of these shelves--the best of all, so Will said--was quite three
hundred feet above the dam. It was filled with bristling, gnarled oak,
and the walls beneath were draped with Nature's curtains, formed of the
long strands of small-leaved ivy; and there, if you liked, you could look
down, to the left, upon a lovely garden, the mossy roofs of mill and
house, all to the left; while to the right you looked up the zig-zag gorge
with its closed-in, often perpendicular walls, to see the glancing waters
of the stream, and far up, the great plunging fall, flashing with light
when the sun was overhead, deep in shadow as it passed onward
towards the west.
Best of all, Will said, was lying on your breast looking right into the
dam, pitching down collected pebbles, which fell with a splashless
"chuck!" making "ducks' eggs," as they called it, and sending the white
Aylesburys scuttling out of the way.
So much for the home of Will of the Mill.
CHAPTER TWO.
FISHING FOR FUN.
It was up one of the shelves at the side of the great ravine that Will
silently hurried his comrade, the Vicar's son, to where they could look
down at the shelf below, a fairly open, verdant space, which offered
before it on the other side of the stream just such a rocky landscape full

of colour, light and shade, as artists love.
Will held up his hand to ensure silence, and then, taking hold of a
projecting oak bough, peered down and signed to Josh to come and
look. There was not much to see; there was an easel and a small canvas
thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette
blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose
thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye.
Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt
hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white
umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all was now in
the shade.
Both boys had a good look down, drew back and gazed at each other
with questioning eyes, before Josh, whose white teeth were all on view,
stooped down and made a slight suggestion, a kind of pantomime, that
he should drag up a great buckler fern by the roots, and drop it plump
on the umbrella spike.
Will's eyes flashed, and he puckered up his mouth and pouted his lips
as if in the act of emitting a great round No.
Josh's eyes began to question, Will's teeth to glisten, as he thrust one
hand into his pocket and drew out a ring of tough water-cord. This he
pitched to his companion, with a sign that he should open it out, while
from another pocket he took out a small tin box, opened the lid, and
drew forth a little cork, into whose soft substance the barbs of a large,
bright blue, double eel-hook had been thrust.
Busy-fingered Josh watched every movement, and it was his turn now
to shake his sides and indulge in a hearty, silent laugh, as he handed
one end of the unwound cord.
This was deftly fitted on, and then, with every movement carefully
watched and enjoyed, Will silently crept into the gnarled oak, till he
was seated astride one of the horizontal projecting