're apt to lose all. If it was meant for me to see mother as well as
hear her, I _should_ see her; and if I was to go to pryin' round
and tryin' to find out what's purposely hid from me, I make no doubt but
I should lose the little that's been vouchsafed to me. But I'd far
rather hear you ask questions like that than to have you throwin' doubt
on the whole business, as you seemed inclined to do at fust."

"Look here," said Mr. Dickey briskly, "do you know it's well on to
half-past ten? and we were to have the key at Pegram's by ten. I think
we'd better do what there is to do, and clear out of this as quick as we
know how, and mebbe some of us will wish before an hour's gone that we
had Uncle Jabez's knack at makin' out a good story."

"You speak for yourself, Dickey," said Mr. Crumlish good-naturedly.
"There's some of us that goes in and comes out, with nobody to care
which it is, nor how long we stay; but freedom has its drawbacks, as
well as other things."

The schoolmaster laughed at himself for striking a match as he turned
the last light out, but he felt moving through his brain a vague wish
that Uncle Jabez would break himself of that trick he had of gazing
fixedly at nothing, and that other trick of stopping suddenly in the
middle of a sentence to cock his head, as if he were hearing some
far-away, uncertain sound.

MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.

FISHING IN ELK RIVER.

When a man has once absorbed into his system a love for fishing or
hunting, he is under the influence of an invisible power greater than
that of vaccine matter or the virus of rabies. The sporting-fever is the
veritable malady of St. Vitus, holding its victim forever on the go, as
game-seasons come, and so long as back and legs, eye and ear, can
wrestle with Time's infirmities. It breeds ambition, boasting, and
"yarns" to a proverbial extent, with a general disbelief in the possible
veracity of a brother sportsman, and an irresistible; desire to talk of
new and privately discovered sporting-heavens. The gold-seeker stakes
his claim, the "wild-catting" oil-borer boards up his lot, the inventor
patents his invention, and the author copyrights his brain-fruit; but
the sportsman crazily tells all he knows. So the secret gets out, and
the discoverer is robbed of his treasure and forced to seek new fields
for his rod and gun.

Colonel Bangem had enjoyed a year's sport among the unvisited preserves
of Elk River. Mrs. Bangem and Bess, their dau