Down my hill of refuge I tore, bareheaded, coatless. Along the familiar route I ran, to Dyrad's Glade, to the creek which flowed south, to the tree spanning the creek. Midway across the tree sat the object of my quest, fishing. A pool of some depth spread out beneath her, and here her hook was cast. Her rod was a slender hickory pole, while a rusty tin can at her side held her bait--the fishing-worms of our boyhood. As I appeared she drew up and at once became engaged in impaling a fat bait on the hook. With the greatest nonchalance she drew the wriggling thing over the barb, and sighted me just as the operation was concluded. She smiled, and the relief wave which swept over me threatened to inundate me root and branch. By this I knew I had reached her first. Then, as I climbed eagerly up, she deliberately pursed her lips and spat on that worm! "Hello!" she said, and cast her line. I did not say hello, nor anything else for a time--for an appreciable time. I felt foolish; light-headed, light-footed, light all over. Something inside my breast seemed spreading and spreading, and I wanted to sing--to shout insanely. This most candid confession will probably arouse grave suspicions in the mind of the reader, but that is so much in favor of a narrative which always sticks closely to the truth. Had I intended to practice any deception, just here is where I would have begun, for I realize, after writing the above, that I am laying myself liable to almost any charge one would care to bring along the line of general idiocy. Just why the ordinary sight of a girl on a log fishing--a back country girl at that--should make a man of the world who has long since left the adolescent stage behind feel like singing and dancing and yelling, is beyond my ability to explain. Let him who reads draw his own conclusions. "You did that for luck, didn't you?" I asked, when I was seated tailor fashion beside her. It had been a boyhood belief of mine; I had simply outgrown it. She was still primitive. She nodded, and put a finger on her lips, turning to me wide eyes of warning. She evidently harbored the other belief that fish won't bite if you talk. I turned to her cork--an old bottle stopper--and saw that it was bobbing; short little ducks sideways which suggested a minnow to me. But the Dryad was all engrossed with the prospects, and watched the stopper's movements intently. Presently it went under in a slanting sweep, and the pole came up promptly and vigorously. A sun perch the size of a small leaf glinted and leaped at the end of the line. Dexterously the girl swung her prize within reach, skilfully removed the hook from its hold in a gill, and dropped her catch in a tin milk bucket at her other side. "I tol' you!" she said, triumphantly, referring to her treatment of the worm before committing it to the stream. At once her tapering fingers began burrowing in the dirt which half filled the can, in search of more bait.