along, each of us absorbed in our own reverie. Was he thinking
exclusively of me--as I was thinking exclusively of him? Before
the journey's end I had my doubts; at a little later time I knew
for certain that his thoughts, wandering far away from his young
wife, were all turned inward on his own unhappy self.

For me the secret pleasure of filling my mind with him, while I
felt him by my side, was a luxury in itself.

I pictured in my thoughts our first meeting in the neighborhood
of my uncle's house.

Our famous north-country trout stream wound its flashing and
foaming way through a ravine in the rocky moorland. It was a
windy, shadowy evening. A heavily clouded sunset lay low and red
in the west. A solitary angler stood casting his fly at a turn in
the stream where the backwater lay still and deep under an
overhanging bank. A girl (myself) standing on the bank, invisible
to the fisherman beneath, waited eagerly to see the trout rise.

The moment came; the fish took the fly.

Sometimes on the little level strip of sand at the foot of the
bank, sometimes (when the stream turned again) in the shallower
water rushing over its rocky bed, the angler followed the
captured trout, now letting the line run out and now winding it
in again, in the difficult and delicate process of "playing" the
fish. Along the bank I followed to watch the contest of skill and
cunning between the man and the trout. I had lived long enough
with my uncle Starkweather to catch some of his enthusiasm for