Here Mrs. Laudersdale came out, and shortly afterward Helen and three or four others.  In reply to their questions, Mr. Raleigh stated that the preceding day’s disaster had been occasioned by a meerschaum, and had merely charred a table with its superficies of papers and pamphlets, which Capua had chosen to magnify for his own purposes; and the assemblage immediately turned its course inland and toward the brooks.  The two who led soon distanced the rest, Capua trudging respectfully behind and keeping them in sight.  Here, as they brushed along through the woods, they delayed in order to examine a partridge’s nest, to tree a squirrel, to gather some strange wild-flower opening at their approach.  Here on the banks they watched the bitterns rise and sail heavily away, and finally in silence commenced the genuine sport.

“Nonsense!” said Helen Heath, meaningly, as Mrs. Laudersdale, when the others joined them, displayed her first capture.  “Is that all you’ve caught?”

Mrs. Laudersdale drew in another for reply.

“How absurd!” said Helen.  “Here a month ago you were the dearest and most helpless of mortals, and now you are doing everything!”

The other opened her eyes a moment, and then laughed.

“Hush!” said she.

“Shs! shs!” echoed Capua, making an infinite hubbub himself.

Silence accordingly reigned and produced a string fit for the Sultan’s kitchen,—­of all the number, Mrs. Laudersdale adding by far the majority,—­possibly because her shining prey found destination in the same basket with Mr. Raleigh’s,—­possibly because, as Helen had intimated, a sudden deftness had bewitched her fingers, so that neither dropping rod nor tangling reel detained her for an instant.

“Our lines have fallen in pleasant places,” said Helen, as they took at last their homeward path; “and what a shame! not an adventure yet!”

Mrs. McLean hung on Mr. Raleigh’s arm as they went,—­for she had taken a whim and feared to see her cousin in the fangs of a coquette; by which means Helen became the companion of Captain Purcell and his daughter, and Mrs. Laudersdale kept lightly in advance, leading a gambol with the greyhound that Capua had added to the party, and presenting in one person, as she went springing from knoll to knoll along the bank, now in sunshine, now in shade, lifting the green boughs or sweeping them aside, a succession of the vivid figures of some antique and processional frieze.  Suddenly, with a quick cry, she disappeared, and Helen had her adventure.  Mr. Raleigh darted forward, while the hound came frisking back; yet, when he found her fainting in the hollow, stood with stolid immobility until Capua snatched her up and carried her along in his arms, leaving his master to reflect how many times such swarthy servitors might have borne her, as a child, through her island groves.  And thus the party, somewhat sobered, resumed their march again.  But in the discovery that he had