’_When the Syrian queen was brought into the presence of Aurelian, he sternly asked her, how she had presumed to rise in arms against the Emperor of Rome? The answer of Zenobia was a prudent mixture of respect and firmness_’—when sharp would come the warning cry of Malcolm—’There he is, Miss!—there he is!’—and she would dash down the historian to find the rod being violently shaken and the reel screaming out its joyous note. Moreover, in this still weather, the unusual visitor not unfrequently brought some other element of surprise with him. She acquired a considerable experience of the different forms of foul-hooking and of the odd manoeuvres of the fish in such circumstances. On one occasion the salmon caught himself on the minnow by his dorsal fin; and for over an hour contented himself with rolling about under water without once showing himself, and with such a strain that she thought he must be the champion fish of the lake: when at last they did get him into the boat he was found to be a trifle under ten pounds. But, taken altogether, this cultivation of literature, varied by an occasional ’fluke’ of a capture, and these placid and dreamlike mornings and afternoons, were far from being as satisfactory as the former and wilder days when Ronald was in the boat, even with all their discomforts of wind and rain and snow. By this time she had acquired another grievance. ’Why did you let him go, pappa, without a single word?’ she would say, as they sate over their books or newspapers in the evening. ’It was my only chance. You could easily have introduced yourself to him by speaking of the shooting——’ ’You know very well, Carry,’ he would answer—trying to draw her into the fields of common sense—’I can say nothing about that till I see how mother’s health is.’ ’I am sure she would say yes if she saw what the place has done for you, pappa; salmon-fishing has proved better for you than bromide of potassium. But that’s not the trouble at all. Why did you let him go? Why did you let him spend the evening at the Doctor’s?—and the next morning he went about the whole time with Ronald! My only chance of spurning a lord, too. Do they kneel in this country, pappa, when they make their declaration; or is that only in plays? Never mind; it would be all the same. "No, my lord; the daughter of a free Republic cannot wed a relic of feudalism; farewell, my lord, farewell! I know that you are heart-broken for life; but the daughter of a free Republic must be true to her manifest destiny."’ ’Oh, be quiet!’ ’And then the girls at home, when I got back, they would all have come crowding around: "Do tell, now, did you get a British nobleman to propose, Carry?" "What do you imagine I went to Europe for?" "And you rejected him?" "You bet your pile on that. Why, you should have seen him writhe on the floor when I spurned him! I spurned him, I tell you I did—the daughter of a free Republic"——’ ’Will you be quiet!’