One of the most romantic spots that it touches in its progress is a fisherman’s cottage, on the estate of my friend Colonel Talbot, who, amongst his large manorial property, possesses a right of fishery for some mile or two up the river—a right which, like other manorial possessions, combines a good deal of trouble with its pleasure and its dignity, and obliges the colonel to keep up a sort of river police for the defence of his watery demesnes. This police consists of Adam Stokes the fisherman, of his follower Gilbert, and his boy Ned Gilbert, who is, after all, but semi-aquatic, and belongs in “division tripartite” to the park-keeper, the gamekeeper, and the fisherman, waging fierce war with the poachers in each of his vocations, one night in defence of the deer, the next of the pheasants, and the third of the pike. Gilbert, who in right of his terrene avocations wears a green livery and a gold-laced hat, is by no means a regular inhabitant of the cottage by the Kennet side, but may be found quite as frequently up at the park, sometimes at the dog-kennel, sometimes in the servants’ hall, leaving the river to the efficient watchfulness of its amphibious guardians, Adam Stokes, the boy Ned, and their dog Neptune, who, excepting when Adam was attracted by the charms of a stronger liquid to the tap-room of the Four Horseshoes, were seldom seen half a furlong from their proper element.

Adam was a man fit to encounter poachers by land or by water—a giant of a man, with more than a giant’s strength, and without the gentleness which so often accompanies conscious power: he knew his full force, and delighted in its exhibition. The unwieldy boat was in his brawny hands a child’s toy, and the heavy oar a bulrush. Bold was the poacher that dared to encounter Adam Stokes! His very voice, loud as that of a boatswain, was sufficient to awe any common ruffian, and the bold, bluff, weather- beaten visage, keen eye, and fearless bearing, were in excellent keeping with tones that seemed at their quietest as if issuing from a speaking-trumpet. His dress beseemed his person and his occupation—boots that might bid defiance to mud or water, a blue jacket that had borne many a storm, and an old sealskin cap, surmounting his shaggy black hair, formed his general equipment. Add a quid of tobacco rolling from side to side of a capacious mouth, a beard of a fortnight’s growth, a knowing wink, and an uncouth but good-humoured grin, and you will have a tolerable notion of the outer man of Master Adam.

His inward qualities were pretty much what might be expected from such an exterior—rude, rough, and coarse, but faithful, bold and honest, and not without a certain touch of fun and good fellowship, and blunt kindness, that rendered him no small favourite with his cronies of the “Four Horse-shoes,” amongst whom his waterman’s songs and sailor’s stories (yarns, as he called them) were deservedly popular. His early history was rather a puzzle in the good village of Aberleigh. He had been brought by Colonel Talbot to his present situation about ten years back, a stranger in the neighbourhood; and little as in general Adam affected concealment, he appeared to have some amusement in mystifying his neighbours on this point. Never were opinions more various. Some held that he had been a London waterman, and quoted his songs, his dexterity at the oar, and his familiarity with the slang peculiar to the great river, as irrefragable proofs that such had been his vocation. Others asserted that he was an old man- of-war’s man, citing his long yarns, his proficiency in making and drinking grog, his boldness in battle, and his hatred of the Monsieurs, as convincing testimony in their favour. Others again (but they were his maligners) hinted that well as he liked grog, a drop of neat Cognac was still more welcome, and insinuated that some of the yarns had about them a great air of smuggling;—w hilst another party, more malevolent still, asserted that boldness might belong to other trades as well as to a sailor, and that his skill as a fisherman, and such a subtlety in detecting nets and lines, as had never before been met with in these parts, savoured strongly of his having at some time or other followed the poaching business himself. This last, in particular, was the observation of his next neighbour, Nanny Sims, a washerwoman and gossip of high repute, who, being a thriving widow of some forty, or belike forty-five, had on his first arrival set her cap, as the phrase is, at Adam, and, in affront at his neglect of her charms, was in a small way as comfortably his enemy as heart could desire.

Little recked he of her love or her enmity. On he lived, a bold, bluff, burly bachelor, with his boy Ned and his dog Neptune, each, after his several way, as burly and shaggy as himself, the terror of water- thieves, and the prime favourite of his master, who, a thorough sportsman, and altogether one of the most complete and admirable specimens that I have ever known of an English country gentleman, refined