360 I GO A -FISHING. 



" Possibly — possibly — but there is a great deal of self- 

 ishness in the world that we don't know of." 



" Come, come Effendi — you are surly and cross. If you 

 did break the second joint of your favorite rod on a three- 

 ounce trout, you need not be in an ill humor with all the 

 world because of it. Let's walk faster." 



"Walk on alone, if you want to; but I'm going to sit 

 down on this rock and stay here till Jack comes, if it isn't 

 till morning. My ankle won't stand any more." 



And down I sat. One can't be always cheery; and 

 somehow there came over me that evening a gloom that 

 I could not at once shake off. For, to say truth, I was 

 thoroughly used up, and had strained my ankle badly in 

 the plunge down the mountain. When one is weary, a 

 slight ache is a serious impediment. Dupont yielded at 

 last to my persuasions, or rather to his own conviction 

 that I must be sent for if I were to get to the hotel that 

 night, and so pushed on, leaving me alone in the forest. 



The moon had by this time come up above the south- 

 ern ridge of Mount Lafayette, and was pouring a flood of 

 silver light into the valley of the Pemigewasset. The 

 light stole down among the trees, scarcely reaching the 

 ground any where, but producing that well-known effect of 

 moonlight — the entire transformation of objects — so that 

 there seemed to be life and even motion every where 

 around me. 



I lit a cigar and stretched myself out on the rock. Im- 

 prudent ? Yes, but comfortable. The great trunks of 

 trees around me began to look like the forest of columns 

 in Karnak. I wondered whether it were really true that 

 only a couple of miles from me at that instant were hun- 

 dreds of people in a great hotel, representatives of the 

 civilization of the century, gathered in a vast drawing- 



