house be?"

"The prettiest spot in the whole glen. If you 'd like to see it in this
picturesque moonlight, come along with me."

I accepted the invitation at once, and we walked on together. The easy,
half-careless tone of the stranger, the loose, lounging stride of his
walk, and a certain something in his mellow voice, seemed to
indicate one of those natures which, so to say, take the world
well,--temperaments that reveal themselves almost immediately. He talked
away about fishing as he went, and appeared to take a deep interest in
the sport, not heeding much the ignorance I betrayed on the subject, nor
my ignoble confession that I had never adventured upon anything higher
than a worm and a quill.

"I'm sure," said he, laughingly, "Tom Dyke never encouraged you in such
sporting-tackle, glorious fly-fisher as he is."

"You forget, perhaps," replied I, "that I scarcely have any acquaintance
with him. We met once only at a dinnerparty."

"He's a pleasant fellow," resumed he; "devilish wideawake, one must say;
up to most things in this same world of ours."

"That much my own brief experience of him can confirm," said I, dryly,
for the remark rather jarred upon my feelings.

"Yes," said he, as though following out his own train of thought "Old
Tom is not a bird to be snared with coarse lines. The man must be an
early riser that catches him napping."

I cannot describe how this irritated me. It sounded like so much direct
sarcasm upon my weakness and want of acuteness.

"There's the 'Rosary;' that's his cottage," said he, taking my arm,
while he pointed upward to a little jutting promontory of rock over the
river, surmounted by a little thatched cottage almost embowered in
roses and honeysuckles. So completely did it occupy the narrow limits
of ground, that the windows projected actually over the stream, and the
creeping plants that twined through the little balconies hung in tangled
masses over the water. "Search where you will through the Scottish and
Cumberland scenery, I defy you to match that," said my companion; "not
to say that you can hook a four-pound fish from that little balcony on
any summer evening while you smoke your cigar."

"It is a lovely spot, indeed," said I, inhaling with ecstasy the
delicious perfume which in the calm night air seemed to linger in the
atmosphere.

"He tells me," continued my companion,--"and I take his word for it, for
I am no florist,--that there are seventy varieties of