wn. The stream, now torn to
white foam on a rocky descent, now swept with a glassy rush between level,
green banks, now moved slowly in a deep-shaded pool, where gleaming
bubbles held filmed sliding replicas of the banks, the trees, the sky.

The sun, growing less a source of light than a brilliant circle of
carmine, almost touched the western range; the shadow troop swept down the
slope and lengthened across the valley; cut by the trunks of trees the
light fell in dusty gold bars across the water. Gordon drew the line
through the dipping tip, knotting on three of the flies. Then he quietly
followed the stream to where it fell into a circular, stone-bound basin.
He made his cast with a quick turn of the wrist, skilfully avoiding the
high underbrush, the overhanging limbs. The flies swung out and dropped
softly on the water. On the second cast he caught a trout--a silvery,
gleaming shape flecked with vermilion and black, shaded with mauve and
emerald and maroon.

In a shallow reach he waded, forgetful of his clothes. He caught another
trout, another and another, stringing them on a green withe. He cast
indefatigably, but with the greatest possible economy of effort; his
progress was all but soundless; he slipped down stream like a thing of the
woods, fishing with delicate art, with ardor, with ingenuity, and with
continual success.

The sun disappeared in a primrose void behind the darkening mountains; the
hush deepened upon the valley, a hush in which the voice of the stream was
audible, cool--a sound immemorially old, lingering from the timeless past
through vast, dim changes, cataclysms, carrying the melancholy, eloquent,
incomprehensible plaint of primitive nature.

Gordon was absorbed, content; the quiet, the magic veil of oblivion, of
the woods, of the immobile mountains, enveloped and soothed him, released
his heart from its oppression, banished the fever, the struggle, from his
brain. The barrier against which he still fished was mauve, the water
black; the moon appeared buoyantly, like a rosy bubble blown upon a
curtain of old blue velvet. He cast once more, and met his last strike, a
heavy jar that broke the weakened line, in a broad, still expanse where
white moths fluttered above the water in a cold, stagnant gloom. He saw
the rotting wall of a primitive dam, the crumbling, fallen sides of a rude
mill. Night fell augustly. The whippoorwills cried faint and distant.

He sat on a log, draining his shoes, pr