interested and somewhat puzzled.

"Who and what could they be? so unlike foot wayfarers!" On the other
hand, too, Waife took a liking to the courteous young man, and conceived
a sincere pity for his physical affliction. But he did not for those
reasons depart from the discreet caution he had prescribed to himself in
seeking new fortunes and shunning old perils, so he turned the subject.

"You are an angler, sir? I suppose the trout in the stream run small?"

"Not very: a little higher up I have caught them at four pounds weight."

WAIFE.--"There goes a fine fish yonder,--see! balancing himself between
those weeds."

OXONIAN.--"Poor fellow, let him be safe to-day. After all, it is a cruel
sport, and I should break myself of it. But it is strange that whatever
our love for Nature we always seek some excuse for trusting ourselves
alone to her. A gun, a rod, a sketch-book, a geologist's hammer, an
entomologist's net, a something."

WAIFE.--"Is it not because all our ideas would run wild if not
concentrated on a definite pursuit? Fortune and Nature are earnest
females, though popular beauties; and they do not look upon coquettish
triflers in the light of genuine wooers."

The Oxonian, who, in venting his previous remark, had thought it likely
he should be above his listener's comprehension, looked surprised. What
pursuits, too, had this one-eyed philosopher?