For the rest, he was the most skilful angler in the whole county; and so willing to communicate the results of his experience as to the most taking colour of the flies, and the most favoured haunts of the trout--that he had given especial orders at the inn, that whenever any strange gentleman came to fish, Mr.Caleb Price should be immediately sent for.

In this, to be sure, our worthy pastor had his usual recompense.

First, if the stranger were tolerably liberal, Mr.
Price was asked to dinner at the inn; and, secondly, if this failed, from the poverty or the churlishness of the obliged party, Mr.Price still had an opportunity to hear the last news--to talk about the Great World--in a word, to exchange ideas, and perhaps to get an old newspaper, or an odd number of a magazine.
Now, it so happened that one afternoon in October, when the periodical excursions of the anglers, becoming gradually rarer and more rare, had altogether ceased, Mr.Caleb Price was summoned from his parlour in which he had been employed in the fabrication of a net for his cabbages, by a little white-headed boy, who came to say there was a gentleman at the inn who wished immediately to see him--a strange gentleman, who had never been there before.
Mr.Price threw down his net, seized his hat, and, in less than five minutes, he was in the best room of the little inn.
The person there awaiting him was a man who, though plainly clad in a velveteen shooting-jacket, had an air and mien greatly above those common to the pedestrian visitors of A----.

He was tall, and of one of those athletic forms in which vigour in youth is too often followed by corpulence in age.

At this period, however, in the full prime of manhood--the ample chest and sinewy limbs, seen to full advantage in their simple and manly dress--could not fail to excite that popular admiration which is always given to strength in the one sex as to delicacy in the other.