cove where the water was deep and cool, he sat in silent
watchfulness, occasionally jerking out a perch bass, sometimes a
pickerel, but for the most part so still he might have been the occupant
of a "painted boat upon a painted" stream. Yet all the time the soft
influences of the hour and place were weaving their spell about him. The
sun was now only a great half-round of red upon the horizon's line, and
way up to the zenith tiny clouds that were like sheep in a meadow caught
here and there its scarlet tinge. It was very still, yet all alive with
woodsy sounds. Now a belated cicada swung his rattle as if in a fright,
next a bull-frog, with hoarse kerchug! took a header for his evening
bath. Once, later on, when the shadows were falling, a sleepy thrush
settled upon a twig near by, and sang his good-night in sweetest tones.
About this time he heard a farm-boy calling anxiously through the
neighboring wood for the lost Sukey of the herd, and at times a dusty
rumble announced a wagon jolting homeward over the unseen road away to
his right. Dan's sense of satisfaction was possibly heightened by this
mingling of nearness and remoteness. He had all life at his ear, so to
speak, yet held it back by his will, as one might listen at the receiver
of a telephone and yet refuse to yield up one's own presence by opening
the lips in response. And here there was no "central" to cut him off,
though he held the situation long.

At last, in the soft dusk, which wrapped him like a mother's arms, he
poled noiselessly down stream, secured the punt, dressed his fish with
the dexterity of a practised woodsman, and washing them neatly in the
river, waded back to his camp. Again the root handle was lifted, the
alcohol lamp filled and lighted, and while the coffee boiled over that,
the fish, laid on the slices of bacon, were set to sizzle comfortably
over a tiny fire of sticks and leaves built in the stony hollow. Dan was
hungry and ate with keen relish. He had produced knife, fork and spoon
from his sunken cupboard, but his frying-pan served for both plate and
platter, and the cover of his dinner-pail for cup. The bread and
doughnuts he had brought from home helped out the repast, which had all
the relish and wholesomeness of the out-door meal which has been foraged
for by personal effort.

Oddly enough in these tobacco-ridden days, Dan did not smoke. When he
had neatly cleaned away the remnants of his feast and replaced root and
stone, he sp