mmle was heard in sighs and gasps of mild
exasperation as he scrambled up the bank to disentangle his line. There
was no time for consideration. Junkie dropped his cap, and, rolling
behind a mass of rock, squeezed himself into a crevice which was pretty
well covered with pendent bracken. Donald vanished in a somewhat
similar fashion, and both, remaining perfectly still, listened with
palpitating hearts to MacRummle's approach.

"Well, well!" exclaimed the fisher in surprise; "it's not every day I
hook a fish like this. A glengarry! And Junkie's glengarry! The small
rascal! Crumbs, too! ha! that accounts for it. He must have been
having his lunch here yesterday, and was so taken up with victuals that
he forgot his cap when he went away. Foolish boy! It is like his
carelessness; but he's not a bad little fellow, for all that."

He chuckled audibly at this point. Junkie did the same inaudibly as he
watched his old friend carefully disengage the hook; but the expression
of his face changed a little when he saw his cap consigned to the
fisher's pocket, as he turned and descended to the stream. Having given
the fisher sufficient time to get away from the spot, Junkie emerged
from his hiding-place.

"Tonal'," he said, in a low voice, looking round, "ye may come oot noo,
man. He's safe away."

The ragged head, in a broad grin, emerged from a clump of bracken.

"It wass awful amusin', Junkie, wass it not?"

"Yes, Tonal', it was; but it won't be very amusin' for me to go all the
rest of the day bareheaded."

Donald sympathised with his friend on this point, and assured him that
he would have divided his cap with him, as Junkie had divided his lunch,
but for the fact that he never wore a cap at all, and the ragged hair
would neither divide nor come off. After this they resumed their work
of dogging the fisher's steps.

It would require a volume to relate all that was said and done on that
lovely afternoon, if all were faithfully detailed; but our space and the
reader's patience render it advisable to touch only on two points of
interest.

As the day advanced the heat became overpowering, and, to escape from
the glare of the sun for a little, the fisher took shelter under some
very tall bracken on the bank near a deep pool. In order to secure a
slight feeling of pleasurable expectation while resting, he put on a
bait-cast, dropped the worm into the deepest part of the pool, propped
up his rod with several