"I can tell where the window is, and the door," said she, breathlessly. "I miss the reading most of all--and friends. I can't see my friends." "Well, your friends can see you, and that's much of a consolation," said Major Allen Barnes. "I stare shamelessly, and you never know. Come along now, and we'll go fishing and have a bully time." He took her arm and led her out into the brilliant sunlight, across the yard, across the little rivulet which made down from the spring through the thin fringe of willows, out across the edge of the hay lands to the high, unbroken ridges covered with stubby sage brush which lay beyond between the meadows and the river. The little Airedale, Tim, went with them, bounding and barking, running in a hundred circles, finding a score of things of which he tried to tell them. It was no long walk, no more than a half mile in all, but he stopped frequently to tell her about the country, to explain how blue the sky was with its small white clouds, how inviting the long line of the mountains across the valley, how sweet the green of the meadows and the blue-gray of the sage. She was eager as a child. "The river is that way," said she after a while. "How do you know?" "I can feel it--I can feel the water. It's cooler along the stream, I suppose." "Well, you've guessed it right," said he. "There's going to be quite a world for you, so don't be discouraged. Yes, that's the river just ahead of us--my word! it's the prettiest river that ever lay out of doors in all the world." "I can hear it," said she, pausing and listening. "Yes--that's where it breaks over a little gravel bed up yonder, fifty yards from us. And here, right in front of us, we are at the corner of the bend, and it's deep--twelve feet deep at least. And then it bends off to the left again, with willows on this side and grassy banks on the other side. And the water is as clear as the air itself. You can see straight down into it. "And look--look!" he said, as he stood with her, catching her by the wrist at the brink. "Down in this hole, right before us, there's more than a million grayling--there's four hundred billion of them right down in there, and every one of them is eight feet long! Sim Gage was right--I'll bet some of them do weigh three pounds. It must be right in the height of the summer run. What a wonderful country!" "Here, now," he went on, "sit right here on the grass on my coat. Lie down, you Tim! That's right, boy--I can't stand this any longer--I've got to get busy." Hurriedly he went about jointing his rod, putting on the reel, threading the line through the guides, while she sat, her hand on the dog's shaggy head.