ou are fishing; it would scare the trout, you
know."

"I don't believe it."

"I have always heard so."

"I don't believe it will pay," said Knowlton as he fitted his rod--"if
I am to purchase trout at the expense of all that."

All what? Diana wondered.

"Suppose we talk very softly--in whispers," he went on, laughing. "Do
you suppose the trout are so observant as to mind it? If you sit
here,--on this mossy stone, close by me, can't I enjoy two things at
once?"

Diana made no objection to this arrangement. She took the place
indicated, full of a breathless kind of pleasure which she did not stop
to analyze; and watched in silence the progress of the fishing. In
silence, for after Mr. Knowlton's arrangement had been carried into
effect, he too subsided into stillness; whether engrossed with the
business of his line, or satisfied, or with thoughts otherwise engaged,
did not appear. But as presently and again a large trout, speckled and
beautiful, was swung up out of the pool below, the two faces were
turned towards each other, and the two pairs of eyes met with a smile
of so much sympathy, that I rather think the temporary absence of words
lost nothing to the growth of the understanding between them.

The place where they sat was lovely. Just there the bank was high,
overhanging the brook. A projecting rock, brown and green and grey,
with lichen and mosses of various kinds, held besides a delicate young
silver birch, the roots of which found their way to nourishment somehow
through fissures in the rock. Here sat Knowlton, with Diana beside him
on a stone, just a little behind; while he sat on the brink to cast, or
rather drop, his line into the little pool below where the trout were
lurking. The opposite side of the stream was but a few yards off, thick
with a lovely growth of young wood, with one great hemlock not far
above towering up towards the sky. The view in that direction went up a
vista of the ravine, so wood-fringed on both sides, with the stream
leaping and tumbling down a steep rocky bed. Overhead the narrow line
of blue sky.

"Four!" whispered Diana, as another spotted trout came up from the pool.

"I wonder how many there are down there?" said Knowlton as he unhooked
the fish. "It makes me hungry."

"Catching the trout?" said Diana softly.

He nodded. "Here comes another. I wish we could make a fire somewhere
hereabouts and cook them."

"Is that a good way?"

"The best in the world," he sai