ge, amidst
a scene quick with home sights and sounds, a strange lack creeps in and
makes itself felt in a dull, aching way. Oddly enough, too, I had a
sense of uneasiness, a 'something going to happen'. I had often
experienced it when out alone in a great forest, or on an unknown lake,
and it always meant 'ware danger' of some kind. But why should I feel it
here? Yet I did, and I couldn't shake it off. I took to examining the
room. It was a commonplace one of the usual type. But there was a
work-basket on the table, a dainty thing, lined with blue satin. There
was a bit of lace stretched over shiny blue linen, with the needle
sticking in it; such fairy work, like cobwebs seen from below, spun from
a branch against a background of sky. A gold thimble, too, with
initials, not the landlady's, I know. What pretty things, too, in the
basket! A scissors, a capital shape for fly-making; a little file, and
some floss silk and tinsel, the identical colour I want for a new fly I
have in my head, one that will be a demon to kill. The northern devil I
mean to call him. Some one looks in behind me, and a light step passes
upstairs. I drop the basket, I don't know why. There are some reviews
near it. I take up one, and am soon buried in an article on Tasmanian
fauna. It is strange, but whenever I do know anything about a subject,
I always find these writing fellows either entirely ignorant or damned
wrong.

After supper, I took a stroll to see the river. It was a silver grey
evening, with just the last lemon and pink streaks of the sunset
staining the sky. There had been a shower, and somehow the smell of the
dust after rain mingled with the mignonette in the garden brought back
vanished scenes of small-boyhood, when I caught minnows in a bottle, and
dreamt of a shilling rod as happiness unattainable. I turned aside from
the road in accordance with directions, and walked towards the stream.
Holloa! someone before me, what a bore! The angler is hidden by an
elder-bush, but I can see the fly drop delicately, artistically on the
water. Fishing upstream, too! There is a bit of broken water there, and
the midges dance in myriads; a silver gleam, and the line spins out, and
the fly falls just in the right place. It is growing dusk, but the
fellow is an adept at quick, fine casting--I wonder what fly he has
on--why, he's going to try downstream now? I hurry forward, and as I
near him, I swerve to the left out of the way. S-s-s-s! a sudden s