crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through
the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray
Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver.

Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the
jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap!
clip-clap! splash!--hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that
the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse.

Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full
length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over,
showing "colour."

"There is Scott," she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest
quiet--"out there in that canoe. No, he hasn't taken his rod; he seldom
does; he's perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half
the night he's out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting,
just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his
dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very
little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all
around--some within a foot of his canoe! He'll never come in to dress
for dinner unless we call him."

And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call
floating out across the Gray Water.

"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!"

They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out,
casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then
ten, and scores and myriads.

They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much
to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the
uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased
as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.

"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed.

"It is sweeter when you break it."

"Please don't say such things.... _Can't_ you understand how much I want
you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel
so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I--just want--a
friend."

There was a silence; then he said lightly:

"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I
seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which
they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I
never thought of you as one of those."

"I seem to be at times--no