t was not older than myself,
except--"

"Except the young lady you told me of," said Helen, turning away her
face; for children are very jealous.

"Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different," said
Leonard. "I could never have talked to her as to you: to you I open my
whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen: I confess to you my wild
whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing poetry." As he said
this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the stream. A belated
angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line impatiently across the
water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a bite before it finally
settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his occupation, the angler did
not observe the young persons on the sward under the tree, and he halted
there, close upon them.

"Curse that perch!" said he, aloud.

"Take care, sir," cried Leonard; for the man, in stepping back, nearly
trod upon Helen.

The angler turned. "What 's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my
perch. Keep still, can't you?"

Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He
remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.

"It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger,
soliloquizing. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born
with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never
catch it,--never! Ha! no, only a weed. I give it up." With this, he
indignantly jerked his rod from the water and began to disjoint it.
While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard.

"Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?"

"No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before."

ANGLER, (solemnly).--"Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give
way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been
the Delilah of my existence."

LEONARD (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical).--"The
Delilah! sir, the Delilah!"

ANGLER.--"The Delilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example. When
I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on that
fatal day, about three p.m., I hooked up a fish,--such a big one, it
must have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length;" and the
angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore,
by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young
man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots,
a