A postern door in the walls opened on an ornamental wooden bridge across the weir-head--a favourite haunt of all fishers and sketchers who were admitted to the dragon-guarded Elysium of Whitford Priors.

Thither Lancelot went, congratulating himself, strange to say, in having escaped the only human being whom he loved on earth.
He found on the weir-bridge two of the keepers.

The younger one, Tregarva, was a stately, thoughtful-looking Cornishman, some six feet three in height, with thews and sinews in proportion.

He was sitting on the bridge looking over a basket of eel-lines, and listening silently to the chat of his companion.
Old Harry Verney, the other keeper, was a character in his way, and a very bad character too, though he was a patriarch among all the gamekeepers of the vale.

He was a short, wiry, bandy-legged, ferret-visaged old man, with grizzled hair, and a wizened face tanned brown and purple by constant exposure.