“It will take us until late in the afternoon to whip the stream from here to the lowest bridge.” Rex smiled down at her and pushed back his cap with a boyish gesture. She had forgotten it until that moment. Now it brought a perfect flood of pleasant associations. She had seen him look that way a hundred times when, in their teens, they two had lingered by the Northern Lakes. Her whole face changed and softened, but she turned away, nodding assent, and went and stood by her father, looking down at him with the bantering air which was a family trait. The lively colonel had found a sunny log on the bank, where he was sitting, leisurely joining his rod. “Hello!” he cried, glancing up, “what are you two amateurs about? As usual, I’m ready to begin before Rex is awake!” and stepping to the edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree. Rex came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with perfect self-possession. “Now see the new waterproof rig wade!” said Ruth, saucily. “Go and wade yourself and don’t bully your old father!” cried the colonel. “Old! this child old!” “Oh! come along, Ruth!” called Rex, waiting on the shore and falling unconsciously into the tone of sixteen speaking to twelve. For answer she slipped the cover from her slender rod and dexterously fitted the delicate tip to the second joint. “Hasn’t forgotten how to put a rod together! Wonderful girl!” “Oh, I knew you were waiting to see me place the second joint in the butt first!” She deftly ran the silk through the guides, and then scientifically knotting the leader, slipped on a cast of three flies and picked her way daintily to the river bank. As she waded in the sudden cold made her gasp a little to herself, but she kept straight on without turning her head, and presently stepped on a broad, flat rock over which the water was slipping smoothly. Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled, and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded by the soft woolen Tam. Swish—h—h! Swish—h—h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing back at Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous splash, just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white wrist, and then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like a thread of smoke. Gethryn’s eyes glittered with excitement, and the colonel took his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn’t shout, “You have him! Go easy on him! Want any help!” They kept quiet.