This was Master Martin Newcombe, a young Englishman, not two years from his native land, and now a prosperous farmer on the other side of the river.
It often happened that Master Newcombe, at the close of his agricultural labours, would put on a good suit of clothes and ride over the bridge to the town, to attend to business or to social duties, as the case might be.

But, sometimes, not willing to encumber himself with a horse, he walked over the bridge and strolled or hurried along the river bank.
This was one of the times in which he hurried.

He had been caught by the vision of the bunch of white flowers in the hat of the girl who was seated on the rock in the shade.
As Master Newcombe stepped near, his spirits rose, as they had not always risen, as he approached Mistress Kate, for he perceived that, although she held the handle of her rod in her hand, the other end of it was lying on the ground, not very far away from the bait and the hook which, it was very plain, had not been in the water at all.

She must have been thinking of something else besides fishing, he thought.

But he did not dare to go on with that sort of thinking in the way he would have liked to do it.