She did not answer—in fact, she could not; she had enough to do. For now the salmon seemed wanting to get right out to the middle of the lake; and the length of line that lay between her and her enemy dragged heavily on her arms. And then he altered his tactics—coming rapidly to the surface and trying to break the suddenly slackened line by furious lashings of his tail. But all this was in vain; and now, as he seemed yielding a little, she put a heavier strain on him, and began to reel up. It was very well done, and without a word of admonition; for Ronald was proud of his pupil, and wished to show that he could leave her to herself.
By and by the fish began to show himself a little more amenable, and preparations were made for receiving him on shore. Miss Carry stepped back a few yards; her father got out of the way altogether; Ronald crouched down, clip in hand. Of course, when the salmon found himself being guided into the shallows, he was off like a bolt; and again and again he repeated these sullen rushes; but each time they were growing weaker; and at last, as the gleam of something white showed in the water, Ronald made a sudden plunge with the clip—and the salmon was ashore.
He laughed.
'I suppose this will be my last day on the loch, and a very good finish it is.'
The men brought along the other fish, and these were all laid out on the grass side by side, though it was now too dark to see much of them. As regards the three salmon, Mr. Hodson's, on being accurately weighed, was found to be sixteen and a half pounds, Miss Carry's two respectively fourteen pounds and eleven pounds. She was a very happy young woman as she walked home with her father and Ronald through the now rapidly gathering dusk.
His last day on the lake:—well, it would be something pleasant to look back upon in after times—the summer-like weather, the still water, the silent and sunlit crags and woods and bays. And perhaps, too, he would remember something of her bright society, her friendly disposition, and the frank good-comradeship with which she shared her meal of milk and bread with two common boatmen. Nay, he could not well help remembering that—and with a touch of gratitude and kindness, too—even though they should never meet again through the long years of life.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PARTING.
Now amid all his preparations for departure nothing distressed him so much as the difficulty he found in trying to write something worthy of being placed in Meenie's book. It was to be his last gift to her; she herself had asked for it; surely he ought to do his best? And perhaps it was this very anxiety that baffled him. Even of such small lyrical faculty as he possessed, he was in no sense the master. He could write easily enough at the instigation of some passing fancy; but the fancy had to come uncalled-for; it was not of his summoning. And now, in this hour of direst need, no kindly Ariel would come to help him. Walking across the lonely moors, with the dogs for his sole companions, or lying on a far hillside, and tearing twigs of heather with his teeth, he worried his brain for a subject, and all to no purpose. Perhaps, if praise of Meenie had been permissible—if he could have dared to write anything about herself in her own book—he might have found the task more easy; for that was the one direction in which his imagination was always facile enough. One morning, indeed, when he was coming down the Clebrig slopes, he saw Miss Carry and Meenie walking together along the road; and he had not much difficulty in shaping out some such verses as these—jingling the rhymes together without much concern about the sense, and then scribbling the result on the back of an envelope to see how it looked:
By Mudal's river she idly strayed,