cked up a handy
fishing-rod and strolled off to fill up the time till damages were
repaired. Look here. Do you know, or don't you, that 'twasn't by more
than a hair's-breadth we missed going over that viaduct?"

"I knew we must have had a narrow escape."

"And you can be tying the fly there on to that gut as steady as a doctor
picking up an artery! Well, I envy you. Look at _that!_" Sir John held
out a brown, hairy, shaking hand. "And I don't reckon myself a coward,
either."

Mr. Molesworth knew that the man's record had established at any rate his
reputation for courage. He had, in fact, been a famous hunter-out of
Dacoity.

"I didn't know you went in for that sort of thing," pursued Sir John,
watching Mr. Molesworth, who, with a penknife, was trimming the ends of
gut. "Don't mind my watching your first cast or two, I hope? I won't
talk. Anglers don't like being interrupted, I know."

"I shall be glad of your company: and please talk as much as you choose.
To tell the truth, I haven't handled a rod for years, and I'm making this
little experiment to see if I've quite lost the knack, rather than with
any hope of catching fish."

It appeared, however, that he had not lost the knack, and after the first
cast or two, in the pleasure of recovered skill, his senses abandoned
themselves entirely to the sport. Sir John had lit a cigar and seated
himself amid the bracken a short distance back from the brink, to watch:
but whether he conversed or not Mr. Molesworth could not tell.
He remembered afterwards that at the end of twenty minutes or so--probably
when his cigar was finished--Sir John rose and announced his intention of
strolling some way farther down the valley--"to soothe his nerves a bit,"
as he said, adding, "So long! I see you're going to miss that train, to a
certainty."

Yes, it was certain enough that Mr. Molesworth would miss his train.
He fished down the stream slowly, the song and dazzle of the water filling
his ears, his vision; his whole being soothed and lulled less by the
actual scene than by a hundred memories it awakened or set stirring.
He was young again--a youth of twenty with romance in his heart.
The plants and grasses he trod were the asphodels, sundew, water-mint his
feet had crushed--crushed into fragrance--five-and-twenty years ago. . . .

So deeply preoccupied was he that, coming to a bend where the coombe
suddenly widened, and the stream without warning cast its green fringe