of Solomon, ending with "Sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is
comely." And when it came to that, the probationer's eyes (if the truth
must be told) went searching through that sea of faces for one that
should be familiar to his heart, and to which he might make a personal
application of the Scripture passage--even the face of Sheila.

There are rivers in the Lewis, at least two of them, and on one of these
we had the offer of a rod for a day's fishing. Accordingly we cast
lots, and the lot fell upon the youngest, and I went forth with a tall,
red-legged gillie, to try for my first salmon. The Whitewater came
singing down out of the moorland into a rocky valley, and there was a
merry curl of air on the pools, and the silver fish were leaping from
the stream. The gillie handled the big rod as if it had been a fairy's
wand, but to me it was like a giant's spear. It was a very different
affair from fishing with five ounces of split bamboo on a Long Island
trout-pond. The monstrous fly, like an awkward bird, went fluttering
everywhere but in the right direction. It was the mercy of Providence
that preserved the gillie's life. But he was very patient and
forbearing, leading me on from one pool to another, as I spoiled the
water and snatched the hook out of the mouth of rising fish, until
at last we found a salmon that knew even less about the niceties of
salmon-fishing than I did. He seized the fly firmly, before I could pull
it away, and then, in a moment, I found myself attached to a creature
with the strength of a whale and the agility of a flying-fish. He led
me rushing up and down the bank like a madman. He played on the surface
like a whirlwind, and sulked at the bottom like a stone. He meditated,
with ominous delay, in the middle of the deepest pool, and then, darting
across the river, flung himself clean out of water and landed far up on
the green turf of the opposite shore. My heart melted like a snowflake
in the sea, and I thought that I had lost him forever. But he rolled