It was a glorious evening early in September, and Little Miss Primrose, who knew all the fairest nooks by the riverside, was letting the old coracle drift slowly along, between high wooded banks, gay with festoons of bright red berries and wreaths of woodbine and feathery clematis, enjoying to her heart's content the soft summer air and the evening sunlight glinting through the trees, which lit up her long yellow hair, till it looked like a halo round the face of some sweet saint. She was dreaming, as she often dreamed now, of her unknown mother, for she was now fourteen years of age, and for some time past there had been growing within her heart a craving to learn something of her mysterious parents--a craving which betrayed itself in the far-off, dreaming expression of her beautiful eyes, the look of one always seeking for the invisible. Deep in her own thoughts, she drifted slowly on, all unconscious of the mute admiration with which a fisherman, seated on a mossy knoll half-way up the bank, was regarding her, as the coracle came slowly towards him. The splash of his line in the water, and his sudden exclamation, as the tug of a big salmon nearly made him lose his balance and roll down the bank, made Little Miss Primrose look up and become suddenly aware of his presence. And when she had looked once, she looked again, for his face seemed familiar, and she thought him very beautiful, for he had thick curly hair, fine features, and merry blue eyes, and she was too young to pay much heed to the strangely irresolute expression in the mouth, which indeed was greatly concealed by a long, fair moustache, or to the restless, wandering look in the bright blue eyes, which with all their merry twinkle wore a look both of over-excitement and of dissatisfaction.