"Thanks, so many," he said, holding back a branch to allow of her passing before him, "but I am going also. It is too bright for sport. In truth, I never expected any, and only came out to renew my acquaintance with the river, and discover, what I expected, that I have almost forgotten how to throw a fly." "Indeed, you have not forgotten how to break in, at any rate," she replied viciously; then ashamed of her unnecessary heat, since surely it was none of her business if he broke every cast he possessed, she added, in superior tones, "there is no reason, however, why you should not get a fish in the Long Pool. The sun won't touch it for half an hour." "The Long Pool," he echoed, "which is that? I'm afraid I have almost forgotten it, too." It was a palpable excuse for continuing the conversation, and as such Marjory resented it; at the same time, no one ever appealed to her for information without meeting with prompt attention, the teaching element being strong in her. So was impatience at crass stupidity; or, as Captain Macleod preferred to call it, a deficient bump of locality. "I'll see you as far as the Alder Island," she said at last, with some irritation, "then you can't possibly make a mistake." That, at any rate, would be better than trailing the whole two miles back to Gleneira beside him. Not that he was forward or objectionable; on the contrary, he treated her with a deference which would have been pleasant had it not covered a quiet coercion which was perfectly intolerable. So the glint of the Long Pool behind the Alder Island came as a relief, and she pointed to it in a sort of triumph. "I'm afraid it is no use," he said despondently. "Too fine; besides, I haven't had my breakfast, and it is growing late. I'll get Cameron to come down afterwards and show me the casts. A river changes in ten years." "You can't possibly judge from here; and I can show you the cast perfectly," she retorted. It had come to a stand-up fight with the gloves on between his will and hers, and accustomed as she was to instant submission from everybody of the opposite sex, she would not confess her own defeat by getting rid of him with a crude dismissal. To begin with he scarcely merited the insult, and, in addition, it might be awkward afterwards. So she pointed out the probable lie of the fish, and, her sporting instincts overcoming her contempt, exclaimed against the gaudy cast he selected--a cast no decent fish would have looked at except in flood time. "No! no!" she cried, in real eagerness. "Something less like a firework, if you have one--a brown body and turkey wing. Ah! here's the very thing. I don't believe in the steel loops, though, do you--? Will doesn't. And you have bridge rings I see; I never saw them before. They look good. Now then! Just below the break, down the slidy bit, and across to the ripple--Oh-h!" The exclamation was caused by a fall as of a coiled hawser on the water, and a separate "blob" of each fly on the surface.