IX

Gay's notion of scientific fishing might have been thus summed: Know

just where to fish and use the lightest rod made. Her own trout-rod

weighed two and a half ounces without the reel. Compared to it,

Pritchard's was a coarse and heavy instrument. His weighed six ounces.

"You could land a salmon with that," said Gay scornfully.

"I have," said Pritchard. "It's a splendid rod. I doubt if you could

break it."

"Doesn't give the fish much of a run for his money."

"But how about this, Miss Gay?"

He showed her a leader of finest water-blue catgut. It was nine feet

long and tapered from the thickness of a human hair to that of a thread

of spider-spinning. Gay's waning admiration glowed once more.

"That wouldn't hold a minnow," she said.

"We must see about that," he answered; "we must hope that it will hold a

very large char."

He reeled off eighty or ninety feet of line, and began to grease it with

a white tallow.

"What's that stuff?" Gay asked.

"Red-deer fat."

"What for?"

"To make the line float. We're fishing with a dry-fly, you know."

Gay noticed that the line was tapered from very heavy to very fine.

"Why is that?" she asked.

"It throws better--especially in a wind. The heavy part will carry a fly

out into half a gale."

He reeled in the line and made his leader fast to it with a swift,

running hitch, and to the line end of the leader he attached the fly

which they had chosen. Upon this tiny and exquisite arrangement of fairy

hook, gray silk, and feathers, he blew paraffin from a pocket atomizer

that it might float and not become water-logged.

"Do we fish from the shore or the boat?" Gay asked.

"From this shore."

"You'll never reach there from this shore."

"Then I've misjudged the distance. Are you going to use the landing-net

for me, in case it's necessary?"

Gay caught up the net and once more followed his stealthy advance upon

the brook.

Pritchard had one preliminary look through the field-glasses,

straightened his bent back, turned to her with a sorrowing face, and

spoke aloud.

"He's had enough," he said. "He's stopped feeding."

Gay burst out laughing.

"And our fishing is over for the day? This shall be said of you, Mr.

Pritchard, that you are a merciful man. You are not what is called in

this country a 'game hog.'"

"Thank you," he said gravely. "But if you think the fishing is over for

the day, you don't know a dry-fly fisherman when you see one. We made

rather a late start. See, most of the fish have stopped feeding. They

won't begin again much before three. The big fellow will be a little

later. He has had more than the others; he is older; his digestion is no

longer like chain lightning; he will sleep sounder, and dream of the

golden days of his youth when a char was a trout."

"_That_," said Gay, "is distinctly unkind. I have been snubbed enough

for one day. Are we to stand here, then, till three or four o'clock,

till his royal highness wakes up and calls for breakfast?"

"No," said Pritchard; "though I would do so gladly, if it were

necessary, in order to take this particular fish----"

"You might kneel before your rod," said Gay, "like a knight watching his

arms."

"To rise in the morning and do battle for his lady--I repeat I should do

so gladly if it would help my chances in the slightest. But it

wouldn't."

He rested his rod very carefully across two bushes.

"The thing for us to do," he went on, "is to have lunch. I've often

heard of how comfortable you American guides can make the weary, wayworn

wanderer at the very shortest notice."

"Is that a challenge?"

"It is an expression of faith."

Their eyes met, and even lingered.

"In that case," said Gay, "I shall do what I may. There is cold lunch in

the boat, but the wayworn one shall bask in front of a fire and look

upon his food when it is piping hot. Come!"

Gay rowed him out of the brook and along the shore of the lake for a

couple of miles. She was on her mettle. She wished him to know that she

was no lounger in woodcraft. She put her strong young back into the work

of rowing, and the fragile guide boat flew. Her cheeks glowed, and her

lips were parted in a smile, but secretly she was filled with dread. She

knew that she had brought food, raw and cooked; she could see the head

of her axe gleaming under the middle seat; she would trust Mary for

having seen to it that there was pepper and salt; but whether in the

pocket of the Norfolk jacket there were matches, she could not be sure.

If she stopped rowing to look, the Englishman would think that she had

stopped because she was tired. And if, later, it was found that she had

come away without matches, he would laugh at her and her pretenses to

being a "perfectly good guide."

She beached the boat upon the sand in a wooded cove, and before

Pritchard could move had drawn it high and dry out of the water. Then

she laughed aloud, and would not tell him why. She had discovered in the

right-hand pocket of her coat two boxes of safety-matches, and in the

left pocket three.

"Don't," said Gay, "this is my job."

She lifted the boat easily and carried it into the woods. Pritchard had

wished to help. She laid the boat upon soft moss at the side of a

narrow, mounting trail, slung the package of lunch upon her shoulders,

and caught up her axe.

"Don't I help at all?" asked Pritchard.

"You are weary and wayworn," said Gay, "and I suppose I ought to carry

you, too. But I can't. Can you follow? It's not far."

A quarter of a mile up the hillside, between virgin pines which made one

think bitterly of what the whole mountains might be if the science of

forestry had been imported a little earlier in the century, the steep

and stony trail ended in an open space, gravelly and abounding in huge

bowlders, upon which the sun shone warm and bright. In the midst of the

place was a spring, black and slowly bubbling. At the base of one great

rock, a deep rift in whose face made a natural chimney, were traces of

former fires.

"Wait here," commanded Gay.

Her axe sounded in a thicket, and she emerged presently staggering under

a load of balsam. She spread it in two great, fragrant mats. Then once

more she went forth with her axe and returned with fire-wood.

Pritchard, a wistful expression in his eyes, studied her goings and her

comings, and listened as to music, to the sharp, true ringing of her

axe.

"By Jove," said he to himself, "that isn't perspiration on her

forehead--it's honest sweat!"

In spite of the bright sunshine, the heat of the fire was wonderfully

welcome, and began to bring out the strong, delicious aroma of the

balsam. Gay sat upon her heels before the fire and cooked. There was a

sound of boiling and bubbling. The fragrance of coffee mingled with the

balsam and floated heavenward. During the swift preparation of lunch

they hardly spoke. Twice Pritchard begged to help and was twice refused.

She spread a cloth between the mats of balsam upon one of which

Pritchard reclined, and she laid out hot plates and bright silver with

demure precision.

"Miss Gay," he said very earnestly, "I came to chuckle; I thought that

at least you would burn the chicken and get smoke in your eyes, but I

remain to worship the deity of woodcraft. An Indian could not do more

swiftly or so well."

Gay swelled a little. She had worked very hard; nothing had gone wrong,

so far. She was not in the least ashamed of herself. But her greatest

triumph was to come.

Uncas, the chipmunk, had that morning gone for a stroll in the forest.

He had the spring fever. He had crossed Placid Brook, by a fallen log;

he had climbed trees, hunted for last year's nuts, and fought battles of

repartee with other chipmunks. About lunch time, thinking to return to

Arthur and recount the tale of his wanderings, he smelled a smell of

cooking and heard a sound of voices, one of which was familiar to him.

He climbed a bowlder overlooking the clearing, and began to scold. Gay

and Pritchard looked up.

"My word!" said Pritchard, "what a bold little beggar."

Now, to Gay, the figure of Uncas, well larded with regular meals, was

not to be confounded with the slim little stripes of the spring woods.

She knew him at once, and she spoke nonchalantly to Pritchard.

"If you're a great deal in the woods," she said, "you scrape

acquaintance with many of the inhabitants. That little pig and I are old

friends. You embarrass him a little. He doesn't know you. If you weren't

here, he'd come right into my lap and beg."

Pritchard looked at her gravely.

"Truly?" he said.

"I think he will anyway," said Gay, and she made sounds to Uncas which

reassured him and brought him presently on a tearing run for her lap.

Here, when he had been fed, he yawned, stretched himself, and fell

asleep.

"Mowgli's sister!" said Pritchard reverently. "Child, are there the

scars of wolves' teeth on your wrists and ankles?"

"No, octogenarian," said Gay; "there aren't any marks of any kind. What

time is it?"

"It is half-past two."

"Then you shall smoke a cigarette, while I wash dishes."

She slid the complaining Uncas from her lap to the ground.

"Unfortunately," said Pritchard, "I didn't bring a cigarette."

"And you've been dying for a smoke all this time? Why don't you ask the

guide for what you want?"

"Have you such a thing?"

"I have."

"But you--you yourself don't--do you?" He looked troubled.

"No," said Gay. "But my father was always forgetting his, and it made

him so miserable I got into the habit of carrying a full case years ago

whenever we went on expeditions. He used to be so surprised and

delighted. Sometimes I think he used to forget his on purpose, so that

I could have the triumph of producing mine."

Pritchard smoked at ease. Gay "washed up." Uncas, roused once more from

slumber by the call of one of his kind, shook himself and trotted off

into the forest.

Gay, scouring a pan, was beginning to feel that she had known Pritchard

a long time. She had made him comfortable, cared for him in the wild

woods, and the knowledge warmed her heart.

Pritchard was saying to himself:

"We like the same sort of things--why not each other?"

"Miss Gay," he said aloud.

"What?"

"In case I land the three-pounder and over, I think I ought to tell you

that I'm not very rich, and I know you aren't. Would that matter to you?

I've just about enough," he went on tantalizingly, "to take a girl on

ripping good trips into central Africa or Australia, but I can't keep

any great state in England--Merrivale isn't a show place, you know--just

a few grouse and pheasants and things, and pretty good fishin'."

"However much," said Gay, "I may regret my _bet_, there was nothing

Indian about it. I'm sure that you are a clean, upright young man. I'm

a decent sort of girl, though I say it that shouldn't. We might do

worse. I've heard that love-matches aren't always what they are cracked

up to be. And I'm quite sure that I want to go to Africa and hunt big

game."

"Thank you," said Pritchard humbly. "And at least there would be love on

one side."

"Nonsense," said Gay briskly. "I'm ready, if you are."

Pritchard jumped to his feet and threw away his cigarette.

"Now," he said, "that you've proved everything, _won't_ you let me

help?"

Gay refused him doubtfully, and then with a burst of generosity:

"Why, yes," she said, "and, by the way, Mr. Pritchard, there was no

magic about the chipmunk. He's one my brother trained. He lives at The

Camp, and he was just out for a stroll and happened in on us. I don't

want you to find out that I'm a fraud from any one--but me."

X

The big trout was once more feeding. And Pritchard began to cast his

diminutive fly up-stream and across. But he cast and got out line by a

system that was new to Gay. He did not "whip" the brook; he whipped the

air above it. He never allowed his fly to touch the water but drew it

back sharply, and, at the same time, reeled out more line with his left

hand, when it had fallen to within an inch or two of the surface. His

casts, straight as a rifle-shot, lengthened, and reached out toward the

bowlder point near which the big trout was feeding, until he was

throwing, and with consummate ease, a line longer than Gay had ever seen

thrown.

"It's beautiful," she whispered. "Will you teach me?"

"Of course," he answered.

His fly hovered just above the ring which the trout had just made.

Pritchard lengthened his line a foot, and cast again and again, with no

further change but of an inch or two in direction.

"There's a little current," he explained. "If we dropped the fly into

the middle of the ring, it would float just over his tail and he

wouldn't see it. He's looking up-stream, whence his blessings flow. The

fly must float straight down at him, dragging its leader, and not

dragged by it."

All the while he talked, he continued casting with compact, forceful

strokes of his right wrist and forearm. At last, his judgment being

satisfied by the hovering position attained by fly and leader, he

relaxed his grip of the rod; the fly fell upon the water like

thistle-down, floated five or six inches, and was sucked under by the

big trout.

Pritchard struck hard.

There was a second's pause, while the big trout, pained and surprised,

tried to gather his scattered wits. Three quarters of Pritchard's line

floated loosely across the brook, but the leader and the fly remained

under, and Pritchard knew that he had hooked his fish.

Then, and it was sudden--like an explosion--the whole length of floating

line disappeared, and the tip of Pritchard's powerful rod was dragged

under after it.

The reel screamed.

"It's a whale!" shouted Gay, forgetting how much depended upon the size

of the fish, "a whale!"

The time for stealthy movements and talk in whispers was over. Gay

laughed, shouted, exhorted, while Pritchard, his lips parted, his cheeks

flushed, gayly fought the great fish.

"Go easy; go easy!" cried Gay. "That hook will never hold him."

But Pritchard knew his implements, and fished with a kind of joyous,

strong fury.

"When you hang 'em," he exulted, "land em."

The trout was a great noble potentate of those waters. Years ago he had

abandoned the stealthy ways of lesser fish. He came into the middle of

the brook where the water is deep and there is freedom from weeds and

sunken timber, and then up and down and across and across, with blind,

furious rushes he fought his fight.

It was the strong man without science against the strong man who knows

how to box. The steady, furious rushes, snubbed and controlled, became

jerky and spasmodic; in a roar and swirl of water the king trout showed

his gleaming and enormous back; a second later the sunset colors of his

side and the white of his belly. Inch by inch, swollen by impotent fury,

galvanically struggling and rushing, he followed the drag of the leader

toward the beach, where, ankle-deep in the water, Gay crouched with the

landing-net.

She trembled from head to foot as a well-bred pointer trembles when he

has found a covey of quail and holds them in control, waiting for his

master to walk in upon them.

The big trout, still fighting, turning, and raging, came toward the

mouth of the half-submerged net.

"How big is he, Miss Gay?"

The voice was cool and steady.

"He's five pounds if he's an ounce," her voice trembled. "He's the

biggest trout that ever swam.

"He _isn't_ a trout," said Pritchard; "he's a char."

If Gay could have seen Pritchard's face, she would have been struck for

the first time by a sort of serene beauty that pervaded some of its

expressions. The smile which he turned upon her crouching figure had in

it a something almost angelic.

"Bring him a little nearer," she cried, "just a little."

"You're sure he weighs more than three pounds?"

"Sure--sure--don't talk, land him, land him----"

For answer Pritchard heaved strongly upward upon his rod and lifted the

mighty fish clear of the water. One titanic convulsion of tortured

muscles, and what was to be expected happened. The leader broke a few

inches from the trout's lip, and he returned splashing to his native

element, swam off slowly, just under the surface, then dove deep, and

was seen no more.

"Oh!" cried Gay. "Why _did_ you? Why _did_ you?"

She had forgotten everything but the fact that the most splendid of all

trout had been lost.

"Why did you?" she cried again.

"Because," he said serenely and gently, smiling into her grieved and

flushed face, "I wouldn't have you as the payment of a bet. I will have

you as a gift or not at all."

They returned to The Camp, Pritchard rowing.

"I owe you your prospective dividends for the year," he said. "If they

are large, I shall have to give you my note and pay as I can."

She did not answer.

"I think you are angry with me," he said. "I'd give more than a penny

for your thoughts."

"I was thinking," said she, "that you are very good at fishing, but that

the art of rowing an Adirondack guide boat has been left out of you."

"Truly," he said, "was that what you were thinking?"

"No," she said; "I was thinking other things. I was thinking that I

ought to go down on my knees and thank you for breaking the leader. You

see, I'd made up my mind to keep my word. And, well, of course, it's a

great escape for me.

"Why? Was the prospect of marrying me so awful?"

"The prospect of marrying a man who would rather lose a five-pound fish

than marry me--was awful."

Pritchard stopped rowing, and his laughter went abroad over the quiet

lake until presently Gay's forehead smoothed and, after a prelude of

dimples, she joined gayly in.

When Pritchard could speak, he said:

"You don't really think that, do you?"

"I don't know what I think," said Gay. "I'm just horrid and cross and

spoiled. Don't let's talk about it any more."

"But I said," said he, "I said 'As a bet, no; but as a gift'--oh, with

what rapture and delight!"

"Do you mean that?" She looked him in the face with level eyes.

Once more he stopped rowing.

"I love you," he said, "with my whole heart and soul."

"Don't," said Gay, "don't spoil a day that, for all its ups and downs,

has been a good day, a day that, on the whole, I've loved--and let's

hurry, please, because I stood in the water and it was icy."

After that Pritchard rowed with heroic force and determination; he

lacked, however, the knack which overlapping oar handles demand, and at

every fifteenth or sixteenth stroke knocked a piece of "bark" from his

knuckles.

Smarting with pain, he smiled gently at her from time to time.

"Will you guide me to-morrow?"

"To-morrow," she said, "there will be enough real guides to go around."

"You really are, aren't you?" he said.

"What?"

"Angry with me."

"Oh, no--I think--that what you said--what you said--was a foolish thing

to say. If I came to you with my sisters Lee and Phyllis, you wouldn't

know which of the three I was, and yet--you said--you said----"

"It isn't a question of words--it's a question of feeling. Do you really

think I shouldn't know you from your sisters?"

"I am sure of it," said Gay.

"But if you weren't?"

"Then I should still think that you had tried to be foolish but I

shouldn't be angry."

"How," said Pritchard, his eyes twinkling, "shall I convince the girl I

love--that I know her by sight?"

Gay laughed. The idea seemed rather comical to her.

"To-night," she said, "when you have dined, walk down to the dock alone.

One of us three will come to you and say: 'Too bad we didn't have better

luck.' And you won't know if she's Lee or Phyllis or me."

* * * * *

Pritchard smoked upon the dock in the light of an arc-lamp. A vision,

smiling and rosy, swept out of the darkness, and said:

"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"

"I beg your pardon," said Pritchard, "you're not Miss Gay, but I haven't

had the pleasure of being presented to Miss Lee or Miss Phyllis."

The vision chuckled and beat a swift, giggling retreat to a dark spot

among the pines, where other giggles awaited her.

A second vision came.

"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"

Pritchard smiled gravely into the vision's eyes, and said in so low a

voice that only she could hear:

"Bad luck? I have learned to love you with all my heart and soul."

Silence. An answering whisper.

"How did you know me?"

"How? Because my heart says here is the only girl in all the world--see

how different, how more beautiful and gentle she is than all other

girls."

"But I'm not Gay--I'm Phyllis."

"If you are Phyllis," he whispered, "then you never were Gay."

She laughed softly.

"I _am_ Gay."

"Why tell me? I know. Am I forgiven?"

"There is nothing," she said swiftly, "to forgive," and she fled

swiftly.

To her sisters waiting among the pines she gave explanation.

"Of course, he knew me."

"How?"

"Why, he said there couldn't be any doubt; he said I was so very much

better-looking than any sister of mine could possibly be."

Forthwith Lee pinioned Gay's arms and Phyllis pulled her ears for her.

Mr. Pritchard paced the dock, offering rings of Cuban incense to the

stars.

* * * * *

From Play House came the sounds which men make when they play cards and

do not care whether they win or lose.

Maud was in her office, adding a column of figures which the grocer had

sent in. The triplets, linked arm in arm, joined her. Arthur came, and

Eve and Mary.

They agreed that they were very tired and ready for bed.

"It's going to be a success, anyway," said Mary. "That seems certain."

"We must have the plumber up," said Eve; "the laundry boiler has sprung

a leak. Who's that in your pocket, Arthur?"

"Uncas. He came in exhausted after a long day in the woods. Something

unusual happened to him. I know, because he tried so very hard to tell

me all about it just before he went to sleep, and of course he couldn't

quite make me understand. I think he was trying to warn me of

something--trying to tell me to keep my eyes peeled."

The family laughed. Arthur was always so absurd about his pets. All

laughed except Gay. She, in a dark corner, like the rose in the poem,

blushed unseen.