the
white mackerel. Winthrop made fast his little skiff between it
and the shore, and climbing upon the rock, he and Rufus sat
down and fell to work; for to play they had not come hither,
but to catch their supper.

The spirit of silence seemed to have possessed them both, for
with very few words they left the boat and took their places,
and with no words at all for some time the hooks were baited
and the lines thrown. Profound stillness -- and then the
flutter of a poor little fish as he struggled out of his
element, or the stir made by one of the fishers in reaching
after the bait-basket -- and then all was still again. The
lines drooped motionless in the water; the eyes of the fishers
wandered off to the distant blue, and then came back to their
bobbing corks. Thinking, both the young men undoubtedly were,
for it could not have been the mackerel that called such grave
contemplation into their faces.

"It's confoundedly hot!" said Rufus at length very
expressively.

His brother seemed amused.

"What are you laughing at?" said Rufus a little sharply.

"Nothing -- I was thinking you had been in the shade lately.
We've got 'most enough, I guess."

"Shade! -- I wish there was such a thing. This is a pretty
place though, if it wasn't August, -- and if one was doing
anything but sitting on a rock fishing."

"Isn't it better than Asphodel?" said Winthrop.

"Asphodel! -- When are you going to get away from here,
Winthrop?"

"I don't know."

"Has anything been done about it?"

"No."

"It is time, Winthrop."

Winthrop was silent.

"We must manage it somehow. You ought not to be fishing here
any longer. I want you to get on the way."

"Ay -- I must wait awhile," said the other with a sigh. "I
shall go -- that's all I know, but I can't see a bit ahead. I'm
round there under the point now, and there's a big headland in
the way that hides the up view."

Again the eyes of the fishers were fixed on their corks,
gravely, and in the case of Rufus with a somewhat disturbed
look.

"I wish I was clear of the headlands too," said he after a
short silence; "and there's one standing right across my way
now."

"What's that?"

"Books."

"Books?" said Winthrop.

"Yes -- books which I haven't got."

"Books!" said his brother in astonishment.

"Yes --why?"

"I thought you said _boots_," the other remarked simply, as he
disengaged a fish from the hook.

"Well," said Rufus sharply, "what then? what if I did