deadly mission, and at the very first cast'a trout is hooked, and in another moment is breathing its last among the daisies and silver seed-globes of the yellowflowered dandelions. Its struggles ere it is seized shake out hundreds of the shuttlecock seeds, and they float away on the south wind over the meadows.

So on we go up the brook, pulling up a trout from this pool where the water swirls under the over-hanging roots of an oak, and a troutlet from that merrily rippling shallow. Although the water is just the right colour, the sun is too bright for very good sport, but we like the bright sunshine, and the additional pleasure it gives to our waterside ramble more than atones for a lighter basket.

Now we enter a wood, where the oaks and the alders crowd too thickly over the stream for us to fish it. We stroll quietly along the mossy glades and mark the lady-fern unfolding its curled fronds among the pale, sweet-smelling primrose clumps, and the delicate white, purple-veined bell flowers of the wood sorrel drooping over its triple, heart-shaped leaves. Between the tree stems a white butterfly flits; the squirrels frisk among the branches overhead, and peer inquisitively at us; from clumps of bracken-the tawny russet of the last year's growth, and the tende green of this-a tiny rabbit, who has come out of his mother's burrow for a first tour of inspection, sits up

on his haunches, and stares solemnly at us; while the atmosphere of the wood is thrilling and quivering with music, the melodies of a hundred birds, and the hum of a million insects, toned down into a sweet and allpervading harmony.

There is the mill, separated from the wood by a meadow's breadth, and such a meadow!-a perfect blaze of spring flowers, that part of it which margins the brook white with nodding cardamines. The stream itself is broad and shallow, and its quiet current slides over trailing masses of weed that wave in the water like a maiden's tresses in a summer breeze.

The mill is a large, grey, irregular building-a farmhouse as well as a mill. Its massive walls are stained with age, and the ivy clothes them here and there with a mantle of glossy green. The huge, black, moss-stained wheel creaks slowly around. It is an over-shot wheel, and the water pours down upon it from the sluice above in an iron-grey column, broken and changed into silver as it splashes and drips from the floats of the wheel. To the left is a broad sloping weir of great height, down which the water dashes with a thousand sparkles, and boils and bubbles in the great pool beneath, whence it is glad to slip quietly away over the sleepily waving weeds.

From beneath the wheel, the water, having done its work for the present, hurries away deep and black along a narrow channel, overhung with water docks and

grasses, knotted rushes, and "water scorpions" (which, when the blue flowers smile at us we call forget-me-nots), until it rejoins its parent stream a little lower down. Here, experience has taught us, there will be a great trout lurking, and we take two of our flies off our cast, leaving only one, that they may not catch in the rushes. and spoil our sport. Then creeping on hands and knees through the cool meadow grasses, we cautiously cast our fly upon the narrow torrent. At the third cast there is a quiet circle in the water-big trout rise leisurely-and an electric tug as we strike announces to us the pleasant fact that we have hooked a nice fish. There is not much room for him to fight, and in a few minutes we have led him into the shallow brook below, and there at last he lies upon the yellow gravel, a silver-bellied, red-spotted beauty, of quite two pounds in weight.

"Ah, you rascal!" cries a voice from an upper window of the mill, "you have caught my best trout. Now just take a cast over the pool below the weir, and then come in and have some dinner. It will be ready in ten minutes. Now, no excuses-you must be hungry after catching such a fish."

That is the miller-a Tennysonian miller.

I see the wealthy miller yet,

His double chin, his portly size,
And who that knew him could forget,
The busy wrinkles round his eyes?

The slow, wise smile that round about
His dusty forehead drily curled,
Seemed half within, and half without,

And full of dealings with the world.

A heavy dinner in the middle of the day does not agree with us, but the miller would not be pleased if we declined his invitation, and we are hungry, so after landing another trout-a small one this time—we prop up our rod against the porch, and enter the mill.

We have a pleasant family dinner in the low-ceilinged, oak-wainscoted dining-room, through the open windows of which a pleasant fragrance comes in from a large, oldfashioned flower garden. At one end of the table the miller presides, jovial in appearance and talk. At the other end the miller's wife is his exact prototype. We are a great favourite of hers, for because the labour of the brain gives us a somewhat pale and preoccupied look, she imagines we are delicate, and what woman can resist the pleasure of doctoring somebody? Therefore, she supplies us with fresh eggs, beautiful milk, almost solid cream, and such other country dainties which she imagines, and rightly so, we cannot get in perfection in the town. She gives us also dandelion tea, and tea made of some other herbs, notwithstanding our protestations that in town we could get something equally nasty. But in her eyes no good thing-always excepting bonnets and dresses can come out of the town, and rarely do we

pay her a visit but she insists on our taking-in her presence, mark you, for she will not accept our promise. -a wineglassful of some intensely bitter decoction. Bless her heart, though! she is a dear old lady.

Then, there is the miller's eldest son, and his wife, with three or four little ones, who have already made a successful raid upon our pockets. There is no maiden "miller's daughter" here, but the youngest daughter, who was married a year ago, has now come home with her babe to "make her boast" to her delighted grandpapa and grandmamma. All at the table are jolly and merry and happy, save one, the only one we have not yet mentioned. He is the miller's younger brother, but to look at him he seems much older than the miller. He was an artist, whose pictures were beginning to sell. Then he met with a love disappointment, which upset his unstable nature. He went utterly and irredeemably to the bad, and now, half imbecile, and wearily waiting for the end, he has accepted the shelter of his brother's home. Miserable as he is, however, his artistic perceptions have not altogether left him, and now he looks more animated and happy, because he has been sitting in the shadow-flecked orchard, between the masses of white and sunlit blossoms, and has been watching the play and dance of the water as it sweeps over the weir; the thrush singing in the apple tree, the lark in the blue sky, and the gay-coloured chaffinch building its lichened