'Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England? eh? to fee English
keepers?

'No, sir. There's pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor folk
that want money more than we keepers. God knows we get too much--we
that hang about great houses and serve great folks' pleasure--you
toss the money down our throats, without our deserving it; and we
spend it as we get it--a deal too fast--while hard-working labourers
are starving.'

'And yet you would keep us in England?'

'Would God I could!'

'Why then, my good fellow?' asked Lancelot, who was getting
intensely interested with the calm, self-possessed earnestness of
the man, and longed to draw him out.

The colonel yawned.

'Well, I'll go and get myself a couple of bait. Don't you stir, my
good parson-keeper. Down charge, I say! Odd if I don't find a
bait-net, and a rod for myself, under the verandah.'

'You will, colonel. I remember, now, I set it there last morning;
but the water washed many things out of my brains, and some things
into them--and I forgot it like a goose.'

'Well, good-bye, and lie still. I know what a drowning is, and more
than one. A day and a night have I been in the deep, like the man