left her, promising to come with his brother on the following day to see
the miller, John Grimbal's impressionable heart was stamped with her
pretty image, his ear still held the melody of her voice.

He crossed the stepping-stones, sat down upon the bank to change his
flies, and looked at the home of Phoebe without sentiment, yet not
without pleasure. It lay all cuddled on the bosom of a green hill; to
the west stretched meadows and orchard along the winding valley of the
river; to the east extended more grass-land that emerged into ferny
coombs and glades and river dells, all alive with the light of wild
flowers and the music of birds, with the play of dusky sunshine in the
still water, and of shadows on the shore.

A little procession of white ducks sailed slowly up the river, and each
as it passed twisted its head to peer up at the spectator. Presently the
drake who led them touched bottom, and his red-gold webs appeared. Then
he paddled ashore, lifted up his voice, waggled his tail, and with a
crescendo of quacking conducted his harem into the farmyard. One lone
Muscovy duck, perchance emulating the holy men of old in their
self-communion, or else constrained by circumstance to a solitary life,
appeared apart on a little island under the alders. A stranger in a
strange land, he sat with bent head and red-rimmed, philosophic eyes,
regarding his own breast while sunset lights fired the metallic lustre
of his motley. Quite close to him a dead branch thrust upwards from the
water, and the river swirled in oily play of wrinkles and dimples beyond
it. Here, with some approach to his old skill, the angler presently cast
a small brown moth. It fell lightly and neatly, cocked for a second,
then turned helplessly over, wrecked in the sudden eddy as a natural
insect had been. A fearless rise followed, and in less than half a
minute a small trout was in the angler's net. John Grimbal landed this