Then they passed down through the narrow defile again and came in view of the wide path—now all saffron-tinted in the evening sunlight—with the lodge and its straggling dependencies in the midst of the plain. Perhaps it was this sight of the house that recalled to her what they had been talking of some time before; for, as they walked along the river-bank, she was again urging him to go out on the following morning; and not only that, but she declared he must have one or two days' deer-stalking while he was in the North. If he missed, then he missed; why should he care what foresters and gillies thought of him? Of course he was very grateful to her for all her kind patronage; but he could not help thinking it rather odd to find a woman lending courage to a man—counselling him to be independent and to have no fear of ridicule.
"I recollect," he said to her, "once hearing Lord Rockminster say that until a man has gone deer-stalking he can have no idea what extremes of misery a human being is capable of enduring."
"Lord Rockminster is incurably lazy," she said. "I think if you found yourself riding along this strath some night about eight or nine o'clock, knowing that away up among the hills you had left a stag of ten or twelve points to be sent for and brought down the next morning—then I think you wouldn't be reflecting on the discomforts you had gone through, or, if you did, it would be with pride. Why," said she, "you surely didn't come to the Highlands to play at private theatricals?"
"I get enough of the theatre in the South," he said, "as you may well imagine."
But here was a bend of the river sheltered from the weltering
sun by a steep and wooded hill; and Miss Cunyngham, at old Robert's suggestion, began work again. It was really most interesting to watch this graceful casting; Lionel, sitting down on the heather and smoking a cigarette, seemed to want no other occupation; he forgot what the object of throwing a fly was, the throwing of the fly seemed to be enough in itself. He had grown to think that all these oily sweeps of brown water, touched here and there by dark, olive-green reflections, were useful only as showing where the fly dropped; there was no fish watching the slow jerking of the "Bishop" across the current; the one salmon that haunted the Rock Pool had put in an appearance and gone away long ago. But suddenly there was a short, sharp scream of the reel; then silence.
"What is it, Robert?" she said—apparently holding on to something. "Another sea-trout?"
"Oh, no, Miss Honnor, I am not thinking that—"
The words were hardly out of his mouth when it became abundantly clear that the unknown creature in the deeps had not the least intention of concealing his identity. A sudden rush down-stream, followed by a wild splashing and thrashing on the surface, was only the first of a series of performances that left Miss Honnor not one single moment of breathing-space. Either she was following him rapidly down the river, or following him up again, or reeling in swiftly as he came sailing towards her, or again she could only stand in breathless suspense as he flung himself into the air and then beat and churned the water, shaking the line this way and that.
"Oh, you wicked little wretch!" she cried, at a particularly vicious flourish out of the water; but this was the kind of fish she liked; this was a fish that fought fair—a gentlemanly fish, without the thought of a sulk in him—a very Prince Rupert even among grilse; this was no malevolent, underhand, deep-boring tugger. Indeed, these brilliant dashes and runs and summersaults soon began to tell The gallant little grilse was plainly getting the worst of it. He allowed himself to be led; but, whenever she stepped back on the bank and tried to induce him to come in, at the first appearance of shallow water he would instantly sheer off again with all the strength that was left in him. Fortunately he seemed inclined to head up-stream; and she humored him in that, for there the water was deeper under