"How do, Sir Risdon ?" The speaker was a curious-looking man of fifty, rough, sunburned, and evidently as keen as a well-worn knife.

He was dressed like a farmer who had taken to fishing or like a fisherman who had taken to farming, and his nautical appearance seemed strange to a man who was leading a very meditative grey horse attached to a heavy cart, made more weighty by the greatcoat of caked mud the vehicle wore.
He had been leading the horse along what was called in Freestone a road, though its only pretensions to being a road was that it led from Shackle's farm to the fields which bordered the cliff, and consisted of two deep channels made by the farm tumbril wheels, and a shallow track formed by horses' hoofs, the said channels being more often full of water than of mud, and boasting the quality of never even in the hottest weather being dry.
The person Blenheim Shackle--farmer and fisher, in his canvas sailor's breeches, big boots, striped shirt, and red tassel cap--had accosted, was a tall, thin, aristocratic-looking gentleman, in a broad-skirted, shabby brown velvet coat, who was daintily picking his way, cane in hand, over the soft turf of the field, evidently deep in thought, but sufficiently awake to what was around to make him stoop from time to time to pick up a glistening white-topped mushroom, and transfer it to one of his pockets with a satisfied smile.
"Ah, Master Shackle," he said, starting slightly on being addressed.
"Well, thank you.

A lovely morning, indeed." "Ay, the morning's right enough, Sir Risdon.

Picking a few mushrooms, sir ?" "I--er--yes, Master Shackle.

I have picked a few," said the tall thin gentleman, colouring slightly.