Chapter 51

BOOK THE FOURTH

A TURNING

Chapter 1

SETTING TRAPS

Plashwater Weir Mill Lock looked tranquil and pretty on an
evening in the summer time. A soft air stirred the leaves of the
fresh green trees, and passed like a smooth shadow over the river,
and like a smoother shadow over the yielding grass. The voice of
the falling water, like the voices of the sea and the wind, were as
an outer memory to a contemplative listener; but not particularly so
to Mr Riderhood, who sat on one of the blunt wooden levers of his
lock-gates, dozing. Wine must be got into a butt by some agency
before it can be drawn out; and the wine of sentiment never having
been got into Mr Riderhood by any agency, nothing in nature
tapped him.

As the Rogue sat, ever and again nodding himself off his balance,
his recovery was always attended by an angry stare and growl, as
if, in the absence of any one else, he had aggressive inclinations
towards himself. In one of these starts the cry of 'Lock, ho! Lock!'
prevented his relapse into a doze. Shaking himself as he got up
like the surly brute he was, he gave his growl a responsive twist at
the end, and turned his face down-stream to see who hailed.

It was an amateur-sculler, well up to his work though taking it
easily, in so light a boat that the Rogue remarked: 'A little less on
you, and you'd a'most ha' been a Wagerbut'; then went to work at
his windlass handles and sluices, to let the sculler in. As the latter
stood in his boat, holding on by the boat-hook to the woodwork at
the lock side, waiting for the gates to open, Rogue Riderhood
recognized his 'T'other governor,' Mr Eugene Wrayburn; who was,
however, too indifferent or too much engaged to recognize him.

The creaking lock-gates opened slowly, and the light boat passed
in as soon as there was room enough, and the creaking lock-gates
closed upon it, and it floated low down in the dock between the
two sets of gates, until the water should rise and the second gates
should open and let it out. When Riderhood had run to his second
windlass and turned it, and while he leaned against the lever of
that gate to help it to swing open presently, he noticed, lying to rest
under the green hedge by the towing-path astern of the Lock, a
Bargeman.

The water rose and rose as the sluice poured in, dispersing the
scum which had formed behind the lumbering gates, and sending
the boat up, so that the sculler gradually rose like an apparition
against the light from the bargeman's point of view. Riderhood
observed that the bargeman rose too, leaning on his arm, and
seemed to have his eyes fastened on the rising figure.

But, there was the toll to be taken, as the gates were now
complaining