s, gave
me any gratification."

Walter replied apologetically, but his uncle turned away with a greater
appearance of anger than his placid features were wont to exhibit; and
Walter, cursing the innocent cause of his uncle's displeasure towards
him, took up his fishing-rod and went out alone, in no happy or
exhilarated mood.

It was waxing towards eve--an hour especially lovely in the month of
June, and not without reason favoured by the angler. Walter sauntered
across the rich and fragrant fields, and came soon into a sheltered
valley, through which the brooklet wound its shadowy way. Along the
margin the grass sprung up long and matted, and profuse with a thousand
weeds and flowers--the children of the teeming June. Here the ivy-leaved
bell-flower, and not far from it the common enchanter's night-shade,
the silver weed, and the water-aven; and by the hedges that now and then
neared the water, the guelder-rose, and the white briony, overrunning
the thicket with its emerald leaves and luxuriant flowers. And here and
there, silvering the bushes, the elder offered its snowy tribute to the
summer. All the insect youth were abroad, with their bright wings and
glancing motion; and from the lower depths of the bushes the blackbird
darted across, or higher and unseen the first cuckoo of the eve began
its continuous and mellow note. All this cheeriness and gloss of life,
which enamour us with the few bright days of the English summer, make
the poetry in an angler's life, and convert every idler at heart into a
moralist, and not a gloomy one, for the time.

Softened by the quiet beauty and voluptuousness around him, Walter's
thoughts assumed a more gentle dye, and he broke out into the old lines:

"Sweet day, so soft, so calm, so bright; The bridal of the earth and
sky," as he dipped his line into the current, and drew it across the
shadowy hollows beneath the bank. The river-gods were not, however, in
a favourable mood, and after waiting in vain for some time, in a spot in
which he was usually successful, he proceeded slowly along the margin
of the brooklet, crushing the reeds at every step, into that fresh and
delicious odour, which furnished Bacon with one of his most beautiful
comparisons.

He thought, as he proceeded, that beneath a tree that overhung the
waters in the narrowest part of their channel, he heard a voice, and as
he approached he recognised it as Aram's; a curve in the stream brought
him close by the spot