And so, in a sort of delicious daze, I arrived at the foot-bridge.
Here I spread my camp-stool by the green pool's edge. It was a torrent, now, but still as brilliant and clear as a beryl, and that it lacked its natural and emerald clarity did not deter me from baiting my hook with several expostulating worms, and hurling it forth into the foaming basin.
To hold a fishing rod in one fixed position bores me, and always did. So I laid the rod on the bank, placed a flat stone on the butt, and, sheltered under my umbrella, lighted a pipe and opened my book.
But the book soon bored me, too. It was a novel by one of the myriads of half-educated American "authors" who resemble a countryman I once knew who called himself a "natural bone-setter" and enjoyed a large and furtive practice among neighboring clodhoppers to the indignation of all the local physicians.
There are thousands of "authors" in the United States. But there are very few writers.
And this novel was by an author, and my attention wandered.
Through an opening in the forest on a clear day one might look out upon a world of mountains eastward. I realized there could be no view through the thickly falling rain, but I turned around. And, to my surprise, I beheld a cloaked figure poised upon the chasm's distant edge, peering out into the storm through a pair of field-glasses.
I knew that figure in spite of the cloak. Nor could the thickly slanting rain quench the glorious color of that burnished hair.
"Thusis!" I shouted.
Slowly the figure turned, glasses still poised; and I saw her looking in my direction.