"Have I not my brother and my father?" she asked.
"True," said the other; "but I should have no such resource."
He had seen a slight hesitation in her last reply. He thought that he had touched the point where the yoke of solitude galled the spirit. He was not one to plant or to nourish discontent in any one; and he turned at once to her brother, saying, "What, at the stream so early, my young friend? Have you had sport?"
"Not very great," answered Walter; "my fish are few, but they are large. Look here."
"I call such sport excellent," observed the stranger, looking into the basket. "I must have you take me with you some fair morning, for I am a great lover of the angle."
The lad hesitated, and turned somewhat redder in the cheek than he had been the moment before; but his sister saved him from reply, saying in a musing tone,--
"I cannot imagine what delight men find in what they call the sports of the field. To inflict death may be a necessity, but surely should not be an amusement."
"Man is born a hunter, Miss Prevost," replied the stranger, with a smile: "he must chase something. It was at first a necessity, and it is still a pleasure when it is no longer a need. But the enjoyment is not truly in the infliction of death, but in the accessories. The eagerness of pursuit; the active exercise of the faculties, mental and corporeal; the excitement of expectation, and of success,--nay, even of delay; the putting forth of skill and dexterity, all form part of the enjoyment. But there are, especially in angling, a thousand accidental pleasures. It leads one through lovely scenes; we meditate upon many things as we wander on; we gaze upon the dancing brook, or the still pool, and catch light from the light amidst the waters; all that we see is suggestive of thought,--I might almost say of poetry. Ah, my dear young lady! few can tell the enjoyment, in the midst of busy, active, troublous life, of one calm day's angling by the side of a fair stream, with quiet beauty all around us, and no adversary but the speckled trout."
"And why should they be your foes?" asked Edith. "Why should you drag them from their cool, clear element, to pant and die in the dry upper air?"
"'Cause we want to eat 'em," uttered a voice from the door behind her: "they eats everything. Why shouldn't we eat them? Darn this world! it is but a place for eating, and being eaten. The bivers that I trap eat fish; and many a cunning trick the crafty critters use to catch 'em: the minkes eat birds, and birds' eggs. Men talk about beasts of prey. Why, everything is a beast of prey, bating the oxen and the sheep, and such-like; and sometimes I've thought it hard to kill them who never do harm to no one, and a great deal of good sometimes. But, as I was saying, everything's a beast of prey. It's not lions, and tigers, and painters, and such; but from the fox to the emmet, from the beetle to the bear, they're all alike, and man at the top o' them. Darn them all! I kill 'em when I can catch 'em, ma'am, and always will. But come, Master Walter, don't ye keep them fish in the sun. Give 'em to black Rosie, the cook, and let us have some on 'em for breakfast afore they're all wilted up."