’You must not resign the agency, Sir; his lordship is whimsical; but you have a friend at court.  I’ve spoken in full confidence in your secrecy; and should any words pass between you and Dr. Sturk, you’ll not mention my name; I rely, Sir, on your honour, as you may on my good-will;’ and Dangerfield shook hands with Nutter significantly, and called to Irons, who was waiting to accompany him, and the two anglers walked away together up the river.

Nutter was still possessed with his furious resolution to fling down his office at Lord Castlemallard’s feet, and to call Sturk into the lists of mortal combat.  One turn by himself as far as the turnpike, however, and he gave up the first, and retained only the second resolve.  Half-an-hour more, and he had settled in his mind that there was no need to punish the meddler that way:  and so he resolved to bide his time—­a short one.

In the meanwhile Dangerfield had reached one of those sweet pastures by the river’s bank which, as we have read, delight the simple mind of the angler, and his float was already out, and bobbing up and down on the ripples of the stream; and the verdant valley, in which he and his taciturn companion stood side by side, resounded, from time to time, with Dangerfield’s strange harsh laughter; the cause of which Irons did not, of course, presume to ask.

There is a church-yard cough—­I don’t see why there may not be a church-yard laugh.  In Dangerfield’s certainly there was an omen—­a glee that had nothing to do with mirth; and more dismaying, perhaps, than his sternest rebuke.  If a man is not a laugher by nature, he had better let it alone.  The bipeds that love mousing and carrion have a chant of their own, and nobody quarrels with it.  We respect an owl or a raven, though we mayn’t love him, while he sticks to his croak or to-whoo.  ’Tisn’t pleasant, but quite natural and unaffected, and we acquiesce.  All we ask of these gentlemanlike birds is, that they mistake not their talent—­affect not music; or if they do, that they treat not us to their queer warblings.

Irons, with that never-failing phantom of a smile on his thin lips, stood a little apart, with a gaff and landing-net, and a second rod, and a little bag of worms, and his other gear, silent, except when spoken to, or sometimes to suggest a change of bait, or fly, or a cast over a particular spot; for Dangerfield was of good Colonel Venables’ mind, that ’tis well in the lover of the gentle craft to associate himself with some honest, expert angler, who will freely and candidly communicate his skill unto him.’