performed a surgical operation, resulting in the recovery of
my tackle.

"There!" I exclaimed, in disgust. "I think I have had enough fishing
for one day. Suppose we call it off. Unless you would like to try, Miss
Colton."

I made the offer by way of a joke. She accepted it instantly.

"May I?" she cried, eagerly. "I have been dying to ever since I came.

"But--but you will get wet."

"No matter. This is an old suit."

It did not look old to my countrified eyes, but I protested no more.
There was a rock a little below where we then were, one of the typical
glacial boulders of the Cape--lying just at the edge of the water and
projecting out into it. I helped her up on to this rock and baited her
hook with shrimp.

"Shall I cast for you?" I asked.

"No indeed. I can do it, thank you."

She did, and did it well. Moreover, the line had scarcely straightened
out in the water when it was savagely jerked, the pole bent into a
half-circle, and out of the foaming eddy beneath its tip leaped the
biggest bass I had seen that day, or in that pond on any day.

"By George!" I exclaimed. "Can you handle him? Shall I--"

She did not look at me, but I received my orders, nevertheless.

"Please don't! Keep away!" she said sharply.

For nearly fifteen minutes she fought that fish, in and out among the
pads, keeping the line tight, handling him at least as well as I could
have done. I ran for the landing net and, as she brought her captive up
beside the rock, reached forward to use it. But she stopped me.

"No," she said, breathlessly, "I want to do this all myself."

It took her several more minutes to do it, and she was pretty well
splashed, when at last, with the heavy net dragging from one hand and
the rod in the other, she sprang down from the rock. Together we bent
over the fish.

"A four-pounder, if he is an ounce," said I. "I congratulate you, Miss
Colton."

"Poor thing," she mused. "I am almost sorry he did not get away. He IS a
beauty, isn't he! Now I am ready to go home."

That journey home was a strange experience to me. She rode Don and
bore the lunch basket and the net before her on the saddle. I walked
alongside, carrying the rod, boots, and the fish in the otherwise empty
bait pail. The sunshine, streaming through the leaves of the arching
boughs overhead, dappled the narrow, overgrown paths with shifting
blotches of light and shadow. Around us was the deep, living green of
the woods, the songs of bi