fleet
passage of her gaze left an indelible impression of an expectancy that
was at once a dread and a strangely youthful candor. She was, he
thought, about thirty.

She wore now a russet skirt of thin, coarse texture that, like the
dress of the evening, took a slim grace from her fine body, and a
white waist, frayed from many washings, open upon her smooth, round
throat.

"He's usually by this post," she continued, pointing down through the
clear gloom of the water.

Woolfolk lowered himself to a position at her side, his gaze following
her direction. There, after a moment, he distinguished the sheepshead,
barred in black and white, wavering about the piling. His companion
was fishing with a short, heavy rod from which time had dissolved the
varnish, an ineffectual brass reel that complained shrilly whenever
the lead was raised or lowered, and a thick, freely-knotted line.

"You should have a leader," he told her. "The old gentleman can see
your line too plainly."

There was a sharp pull, she rapidly turned the handle of the
protesting reel, and drew up a gasping, bony fish with extended red
wings.

"Another robin!" she cried tragically. "This is getting serious.
Dinner," she informed him, "and not sport, is my object."

He looked out to where a channel made a deep blue stain through the
paler cerulean of the sea. The tide, he saw from the piling, was low.

"There should be a rockfish in the pass," he pronounced.

"What good if there is?" she returned. "I couldn't possibly throw out
there. And if I could, why disturb a rock with this?" She shook the
short awkward rod, the knotted line.

He privately acknowledged the palpable truth of her objections, and
rose.

"I've some fishing things on the ketch," he said, moving away. He blew
shrilly on a whistle from the beach, and Halvard dropped over the
_Gar's_ side into the tender.

Woolfolk was soon back on the wharf, stripping the canvas cover from
the long cane tip of a fishing rod brilliantly wound with green and
vermilion, and fitting it into a dark, silver-capped butt. He locked a
capacious reel into place, and, drawing a thin line through agate
guides, attached a glistening steel leader and chained hook. Then,
adding a freely swinging lead, he picked up the small mullet that lay
by his companion.

"Does that have to go?" she demanded. "It's such a slim chance, and it
is my only mullet."

He ruthlessly sliced a piece from the silvery side; and, risin