_Angler_, (with an appearance of awe.)--"It does seem supernatural. But it _is_ that perch; for harkye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in the whole brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another perch here; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by sight better than I know my own lost father. For each time that I have raised it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I have seen, with a shudder, that it has had only--One Eye! It is a most mysterious and a most diabolical phenomenon that perch! It has been the ruin of my prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica; I could not go, with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterwards have had an appointment in India, but I could not put the ocean between myself and that perch: thus have I fritted away my existence in the fatal metropolis of my native land. And once a-week, from February to December, I come hither--Good Heavens! if I should catch the perch at last, the occupation of my existence will be gone." Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume. He looked woefully threadbare and shabby--a genteel sort of shabbiness too--shabbiness in black. There was humor in the corners of his lip; and his hands, though they did not seem very clean--indeed his occupation was not friendly to such niceties--were those of a man who had not known manual labor. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of his nose was red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself as to his Dalilah--the perch. "Such is life!" recommenced the angler in a moralizing tone, as he slid his rod into its canvas case. "If a man knew what it was to fish all one's life in a stream that has only one perch!--to catch that one perch nine times in all, and nine times to see it fall back into the water, plump;--if man knew what it was--why, then"--Here the angler looked over his shoulder full at Leonard--"why, then, young sir, he would know what human life is to vain ambition. Good evening." Away he went, treading over the daisies and king cups. Helen's eyes followed him wistfully. "What a strange person!" said Leonard, laughing. "I think he is a very wise one," murmured Helen; and she came close up to Leonard, and took his hand in both hers, as if she felt already that he was in need of the Comforter--the line broke, and the perch lost! CHAPTER IX. At noon the next day, London stole upon them, through a gloomy, thick, oppressive atmosphere. For where is it that we can say London _bursts_ on the sight? It stole on them through one of its fairest and most gracious avenues of approach--by the stately gardens of Kensington--along the side of Hyde Park, and so on towards Cumberland Gate.