ad feared, Condy was absurdly ahead of
time the next morning. For a wonder, he had not forgotten the rods;
but he was one tremor of nervousness. He would eat no breakfast.

"We're going to miss that train," he would announce from time to time;
"I just know it. Blix, look what time it is. We ought to be on the
way to the depot now. Come on; you don't want any more coffee. Have
you got everything? Did you put the reels in the lunch-basket?--and the
fly-book? Lord, if we should forget the fly-book!"

He managed to get her to the depot over half an hour ahead of time.
The train had not even backed in, nor the ticket office opened.

"I told you, Condy, I told you," complained Blix, sinking helplessly
upon a bench in the waiting-room.

"No--no--no," he answered vaguely, looking nervously about, his head in
the air. "We're none too soon--have more time to rest now. I wonder
what track the train leaves from. I wonder if it stops at San Bruno.
I wonder how far it is from San Bruno to Lake San Andreas. I'm afraid
it's going to rain. Heavens and earth, Blix, we forgot the shrimps!"

"No, NO! Sit down, I've got the shrimps. Condy, you make me so nervous
I shall scream in a minute."

Some three-quarters of an hour later the train had set them down at San
Bruno--nothing more than a road-house, the headquarters for
duck-shooters and fishermen from the city. However, Blix and Condy
were the only visitors. Everybody seemed to be especially nice to them
on that wonderful morning. Even the supercilious ticket-seller at the
San Francisco depot had unbent, and wished them good luck. The
conductor of the train had shown himself affable. The very brakeman
had gone out of his way to apprise them, quite five minutes ahead of
time, that "the next stop was their place." And at San Bruno the
proprietor of the road-house himself hitched up to drive them over to
the lake, announcing that he would call for them at "Richardson's" in
time for the evening train.

"And he only asked me four bits for both trips," whispered Condy to
Blix as they jogged along.

The country was beautiful. It was hardly eight o'clock, and the
morning still retained much of the brisk effervescence of the early
dawn. Great bare, rolling hills of gray-green, thinly scattered with
live-oak, bore back from the road on either hand. The sky was pale
blue. There was a smell of cows in the air, and twice they heard an
unseen lark singing. It was very sti