The old imperiousness was back in full swing, and once again she had a willing slave, eager as she was for the sight of something long and brown curving, snakelike, into the shallow as if of its own free will, or coming in despairingly "this side up." It was a sharp, swift struggle, all the sharper and swifter because of that ominous snag over the way; and then an eight-pound grilse with the sea-lice still on him lay on the bank.
"Oh! What a beautiful creature! One of the prettiest I have ever seen," cried Marjory, ecstatically, on her knees beside the prize.
"Very much so, indeed." Captain Macleod's voice was absent, and his eyes were not on the fish. "You killed him splendidly."
The light went out of the girl's face; she rose to her feet slowly.
"I wish I had given you the rod," she said, still looking down on the palpitating, quivering bar of silver.
"That is most forgiving of you!"
She turned upon him almost indignantly. "Oh! I wasn't thinking of all that--that stuff! I was thinking--it seems so cruel."
"Many things seem so afterwards. One might spend a lifetime in regretting, if it was worth it; but it isn't."
"Isn't it? I wish anyhow that I hadn't killed that fish."
"Why not go further back, and wish you hadn't interfered to safe my cast? for, as it happens, the one you chose out was the very one Fate had ordained should remain in an alder bush----"