"You had better try again," she said gravely, "and don't thrash so; use your wrist." "If there was more wind," he suggested. "Nonsense! you ought to be able to throw that distance anyhow. It's all knack; it will come back after a cast or two. I'm sure it will." Apparently she was wrong. The line ceased, it is true, to fall in a heap like an umbrella, yet failed by many feet to reach the break above the slidy bit. "Give me the rod a moment," she cried, "and I'll show you the turn of the wrist. You'll recognise it then." There was an instant's pause as she stood, one foot planted against a stone, her lithe figure thrown backwards, her chin following the little toss of her head, tilted sideways; so that her eager young face was in full view of her companion; and then the long line flew out in the spey cast and seemed to nestle down just where the water broke. "Bravo!" cried Captain Macleod, as much to the picture as to the skill. And then before he could say another word came an eddy, a noise like the cloop of a cork, a glint of a silvery side, and the whirr of the reel. Things to drive all else from a fisherman's brain. "In to him!" shouted the Captain, excitedly; "and a beauty, too. No! no; keep it. I'd rather you kept it! I'd like to see you land him--if you can." The implied doubt, joined to the vicious shooting of something like a huge silver whiting with its tail in its mouth into the air, warning the girl of the danger of a slack line, had the desired effect. She set her teeth and gave herself up to repairing the error of indecision. The fish, having got his head, was now further down the pool than he should have been, and close to an ugly snag, towards which he bored with the strange cunning which seems born in fish. Marjory gave him the butt bravely, but he fought like a demon, and for one instant the reel gave out an ominous clicking. "Perhaps I had better," came an eager voice beside her. "It is heavier than I thought." "Please not! Please let me keep it now! I'd rather lose him--there!" A rapid wind-up emphasised her excitement. "I can manage him, you see--if you will go down--there by the white stones--I'll get him into the shallow--the tackle is so light I can scarcely bring him up--and--and--don't be in a hurry--I'll bring him in right over the click." The old imperiousness was back in full swing, and once again she had a willing slave, eager as she was for the sight of something long and brown curving, snakelike, into the shallow as if of its own free will, or coming in despairingly "this side up." It was a sharp, swift struggle, all the sharper and swifter because of that ominous snag over the way; and then an eight-pound grilse with the sea-lice still on him lay on the bank. "Oh! What a beautiful creature! One of the prettiest I have ever seen," cried Marjory, ecstatically, on her knees beside the prize.