178 The Life of Fred Archer 
' Let them alone, it's dangerous to touch them.' But Fred 
went up and separated them. I have thought since that it 
was a small instance of the tremendous nerve he showed when 
he was riding. 
" You know, too, that there is a little trout stream down at 
the back of the inn. Freddy Pratt and I were always fishing 
in it, and never, of course, caught anything. One day by 
a fluke Freddy stuck in the end of one of those bamboo fishing- 
rods that pull out, and it stuck in the fin of a trout, and 
he pulled it out. 
" We went up in triumph to the house with it, but his 
Uncle Fred utterly refused to believe that he had caught it. 
He said, ' Oh, the two of you together are a bit too much.' 
He thought we had got the trout from somewhere else and were 
just making it up. 
" Father was a very reserved man. When mother died 
it simply broke his heart. Nobody could get him out of 
himself — he had no spirit left, and moped and wouldn't talk 
about his trouble, and at last it killed him. So I never re- 
member his talking much about Archer. I think it was their 
very reservedness that drew the two men together. Each 
knew that the other wouldn't talk about his affairs." 
Henry Parker was still living in Prestbury, and is probably 
there now, up by Queen's Wood, when Archer has been in 
his grave this many and many a year. 
" When Freddie was a great man," says this old friend and 
servant, " he never forgot me, and always spoke to me, who- 
ever he was with, when he rode through the village, and he 
would often chuck me half-a-sovereign. 
" Once, in 1881, when he came down for the hunting 
season and stayed at the Andoversford Inn, I went up there and 
valeted him. One day, when I was brushing his things, Mr. 
Archer said, ' You can take that suit away.' I was pleased 
with it. It was a lovely fine coat and waistcoat of fine Melton 
