busy with rods and bait. "The mission is ten
miles on. Now we're going to catch our breakfast--there's an excellent
spot just opposite that big cedar."

Clark had not fished much, but he loved it, like most men of intellect,
and discovered that he had been steered straight into the best fishing
he had ever known. They were small mouthed bass, deep of belly and
high of back, and they fought in the brown water over the twitching
minnows that dangled from the Evangeline bow and stern.

"I'm glad you came." The bishop smoothed down the spines of a big
three pounder ere he gripped it.

"Best thing I ever did. Fishing is a clerical pursuit, isn't it?"

The bishop nodded without turning his head. "Yes, but it's not always
for money. We have to bait our hooks according to the season of men's
minds. By the way, some of my best friends are in your country."

"Yes?"

"Had a church in Chicago for ten years,--there at the time of the great
fire--it stopped a few blocks from my house. I had to marry a devoted
couple a day or two later and the wedding fee was a bunch of candles.
Glad to get them; whole city in darkness and it seemed suitable that
the parson's house should reflect light. You remind me of one of my
friends at that time."

"Why and how?" said Clark. He knew so little of himself as appearing
in other people's minds.

"This man was a big Chicago importer--look out, you've got another
bass--and he was in New York at the time of the fire--heard his
warehouses were threatened and bought trainloads of stuff and rushed it
through. It arrived while the other stuff was still smoking, and he
made much more than he-- My dear sir, that's the best fish of the
evening, let me look at him."

Clark laid the twitching body of a bass on the teak deck, while the big
man came aft, trailing his bait and slowly reeling up his line. As the
minnow glimmered in towards the yacht's black side, there came a heavy
plunge, the bishop's rod bent double, and the line sang off his reel.
He was a famous fisherman, and Clark watched him admiringly. To every
ounce of pliant bamboo on his six ounce rod there was, down in the
brown water, a pound of savagely fighting weight. Deeper went the big
fish and further, but ever the taut line yielded by fractions, and the
nearly doubled rod kept up a steady insidious strain. As the bass
dashed back, the bishop recovered his nearly spent line while his lips
pressed tight and the light of