hink that's a human hand?"

"I do."

"It's a slim one--a child's, or a young girl's."

"It is. _She_ had be-u-tiful hands."

"Who?"

"That girl I saw last evening."

Langdon slowly turned and looked at Sayre.

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"Nothing yet--except a million different little romances."

"Of course, you'd do that anyway. But what scientific inference do you
draw? Here's a thing that looks like a hammock lying on the ground. One
end seems to be lifted; perhaps that _is_ a hand. Well, what about it?"

"I'm going to find out."

"How?"

"By--fishing," said Sayre quietly, rising and picking up his rod.

"You're going back there in hopes of----"

"In hopes."

After a silence Langdon said: "You say she was unusually pretty?"

"Unusually."

"Shall I--go with you, William?"

"No," said Sayre coldly.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

III

SAYRE had been fishing for some time with the usual result when the
slightest rustle of foliage caught his ear. He looked up. She was
standing directly behind him.

He got to his feet immediately and pulled off his cap. That was too bad;
he was better looking with it on his head.

"I wondered whether you'd come again," he said, so simply and naturally
that the girl, whose grey eyes had become intent on his scanty hair with
a surprised and pained expression, looked directly into his smiling and
agreeable face.

"Did you come to fish this pool?" he asked. "You are very welcome to. _I_
can't catch anything."

"Why do you think that I am out fishing?" she asked in a curiously clear,
still voice--very sweet and young--but a voice that seemed to grow out of
the silence instead of to interrupt it.

"You are fishing, are you not? or at least you came here to fish last
evening?" he said.

"Why do you think so?"

"You had a net."

He expected her to say that it was a hammock which she was trailing
through the woods in search of two convenient saplings on which to hang
it.

She said: "Yes, it was a net."

"Did my being here drive you away from your favourite pool?"

She looked at him candidly. "You are not a sportsman, are you?"

"N--no," he admitted, turning red. "Why?"

"People who take trout in nets are fined and imprisoned."

"Oh! But you _said_ you had a net."

"It wasn't a fish net."

He waited. She offered no further explanation. Sometimes she looked at
him, rather gravely, he thought; sometimes she looked at the stream.
The