in the line gently. The water was unusually clear; in two minutes
I saw that perch return. He approached the hook; he recognized his eye,
frisked his tail, made a plunge, and, as I live, carried off the eye,
safe and sound; and I saw him digesting it by the side of that water-
lily. The mocking fiend! Seven times since that day, in the course of a
varied and eventful life, have I caught that perch, and seven times has
that perch escaped."

LEONARD (astonished).--"It can't be the same perch; perches are very
tender fish. A hook inside of it, and an eye hooked out of it--no perch
could withstand such havoc in its constitution."

ANGLER (with an appearance of awe).--"It does seem supernatural. But it
is that perch; for hark ye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in the whole
brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another
perch; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by sight
better than I knew my own lost father. For each time that I have raised
it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I have seen
with a shudder that it has had only--One Eye! It is a most mysterious
and a most diabolical phenomenon, that perch! It has been the ruin of my
prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica: I could not go
with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterwards have had an
appointinent in India, but I could not put the ocean between myself and
that perch: thus have I frittered away my existence in the fatal
metropolis of my native land. And once a week from February to December
I come hither. Good heavens! if I should catch the perch at last, the
occupation of my existence will be gone."

Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully
concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume.