supply of writing-paper and these provisions,
feeling like a reluctant child who hopes to be called back at every
step. There was no relenting voice to be heard, and when I reached the
schoolhouse, I found that I had left an open window and a swinging
shutter the day before, and the sea wind that blew at evening had
fluttered my poor sheaf of papers all about the room.

So the day did not begin very well, and I began to recognize that it
was one of the days when nothing could be done without company. The
truth was that my heart had gone trouting with William, but it would
have been too selfish to say a word even to one's self about spoiling
his day. If there is one way above another of getting so close to
nature that one simply is a piece of nature, following a primeval
instinct with perfect self-forgetfulness and forgetting everything
except the dreamy consciousness of pleasant freedom, it is to take the
course of a shady trout brook. The dark pools and the sunny shallows
beckon one on; the wedge of sky between the trees on either bank, the
speaking, companioning noise of the water, the amazing importance of
what one is doing, and the constant sense of life and beauty make a
strange transformation of the quick hours. I had a sudden memory of
all this, and another, and another. I could not get myself free from
"fishing and wishing."

At that moment I heard the unusual sound of wheels, and I looked past
the high-growing thicket of wild-roses and straggling sumach to see the
white nose and meagre shape of the Caplin horse; then I saw William
sitting in the open wagon, with a small expectant smile upon his face.

"I 've got two lines," he said. "I was quite a piece up the road. I
thought perhaps 't was so you 'd feel like going."

There was enough excitement for most occasions in hearing William speak
three sentences at once. Words seemed but vain to me at that bright
moment. I stepped back from the schoolhouse window with a beating
heart. The spruce-beer bottle was not yet in the well, and with that
and my luncheon, and Pleasure at the helm, I went out into the happy
world. The land breeze was blowing, and, as we turned away, I saw a
flutter of white go past the window as I left the schoolhouse and my
morning's work to their neglected fate.

II.

One seldom gave way to a cruel impulse to look at an ancient seafaring
William, but one felt as if he were a growing boy; I only hope that he
felt much th