"Both, with two rooms—supper for the lady in her own chamber—for me, anywhere."
"Supper!" cried the landlord, with a crest-fallen look, "supper! We haven't a morsel of fresh meat, nor a chicken on the place."
"But there is trout in the brook, I suppose," answered the traveller.
"Wal, how did you know that? Been in these parts afore mebby."
"These hills are full of trout streams, everybody knows that, who ever heard of the state," was the courteous reply. "If you have a pole and line handy perhaps I can help you."
"There is one in the porch—I'll just turn out the horse, and show you the way."
The traveller seemed glad to be relieved from observation. He turned hurriedly away, and taking a rude fishing-rod from the porch went round the house, and crossing a meadow behind it, came out upon the banks of a mountain stream, that marked the precipitous boundaries of the valley. A wild, sparkling brook it was—broken up by rocks sinking into deep, placid pools, and leaping away through the witch-hazels and brake leaves that overhung it with a soft, gushing murmur so sweet and cheerful, that it seemed like the sunshine laughing, as it was drawn away to the hill shadows.
Jacob Strong looked up and down the stream with a sad countenance. "How natural everything seems," he muttered. "She used to sit here on this very stone, with her little fish-pole, and send me off yonder after box-wood blossoms and wild honeysuckles, while she dipped her feet in and out of the water, just to hurry me back again. Those white little feet—how I did love to see her go barefooted! By and by, as she grew older, how she would laugh at my awkward way of baiting her hook—she didn't know what made my hand tremble—no, nor never will!"
Jacob sat down upon the stone on which his eyes had been riveted. With his face resting between his hands, an elbow supported by each knee, and his feet buried in a hollow choked up with wood moss, he fell into one of those profound reveries, that twine every fibre of the heart around the past. The fishing rod lay at his feet, unheeded. Just beneath his eye, was a deep pool, translucent as liquid diamond, and sleeping at the bottom, were three or four fine trout, floating upon their fins, with their mottled sides now and then sending a soft rainbow gleam through the water.