Plashwater Weir¹ Mill Lock looked tranquil² 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, dozing⁴. Wine must be got into a butt⁵ by some agency before it can be drawn⁶ out; and the wine of sentiment never having been got into Mr Riderhood by any agency, nothing in nature tapped him.

As the Rogue⁷ sat, ever and again nodding himself off his balance, his recovery was always attended by an angry stare and growl⁸, as if, in the absence of any one else, he had aggressive inclinations⁹ towards himself. In one of these starts the cry of ‘Lock, ho! Lock!’ prevented his relapse into a doze¹⁰. Shaking himself as he got up like the surly brute¹¹ 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 sluices¹², 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.

分享到：