“And did your Uncle David used to bring you here?” Pepeeta asked.

“Well, I should say,” he whispered.  “He used to bring me here when I was such a little fellow that he sometimes had to carry me on his back.  He was the greatest fisherman thee ever saw.  I cannot fish so well myself!”

And with this ingenuous avowal, at which Pepeeta smiled appreciatively, they laid their baskets down, and Steven began preparing the rude tackle.

“Did thee ever bait a hook, Pepeeta?” he asked under his breath.

“I never did, but I think I can,” she answered doubtfully.

And then he laughed again, not loudly, but in a fine chuckle which gave vent to his joy and expressed his incredulity in a manner fitting such solitude.

“If thee cannot skip a stone I should like to know what makes thee think that thee can bait a hook,” he said, still speaking in low whispers.  “I have seen lots of girls try it, but I never saw one succeed.  Just the minute they touch the worm they begin to squeal, and when they try to stick it on the hook, they generally, have a sort of fit.  So I guess thee had better not try.  Just let me do it for thee; I’ll fix it just as my Uncle David used to for me when I was a little fellow, and helpless like a girl.”  Pepeeta laughed, and Steven laughed with her, although he did not know for what, and they took their poles and sat down by the side of the stream, the child intent on the sport and the woman intent on the child.

He was an adept in that gentle art which has claimed the devotion of so many elect spirits, and gave his soul up to his work with an entire abandon.  The waters were seldom disturbed in those early days when the country was sparsely settled, and the fish took the bait recklessly.  One after another the boy flung them out upon the bank with smothered exclamations of delight, with which he mingled reproaches and sympathy for Pepeeta’s lack of success.

She was catching fish he knew not of, drawing them one by one out of the deep pools of memory and imagination.

There is one thing dearer to a boy than catching fish.  That is cooking and eating them.

Hunger began at last to gnaw at Steven’s vitals and to make itself imperatively felt.  He looked up at the sun as if to tell the time by its location, though in reality he regulated his movements by that infallible horologue ticking beneath his jacket.

“It must be after twelve,” he said, although it was not yet eleven.

“Where are we going to have our dinner?” Pepeeta asked.

“Come, and I will show thee,” he replied, flinging down his pole and gathering his fish together.

Pepeeta followed him as he led the way up from the river’s side to a ledge of rocks that frowned above it.

Rounding a cliff, they came suddenly upon the mouth of a cave where Steven threw down the fish, assumed an air of secrecy, took Pepeeta by the hand and led her toward it, whispering: