rown ripples, shot with dim prismatic lights, showing
here clear green water lines, here inky depths, and he thought of the
possibility of trout. He wished for fishing-tackle.

Then suddenly out of a mass of green looked two girls, with wide,
startled eyes, and rounded mouths of terror which gave vent to screams.
There was a scuttling, then silence. The man wondered why the girls were
so silly, why they ran. He did not dream of the possibility of their
terror of him. He ate another wintergreen leaf, and thought of the woman
he had expected to marry when he was arrested and imprisoned. She did
not go back to his childish memories. He had met her when first youth
had passed, and yet, somehow, the savor of the wintergreen leaves
brought her face before him. It is strange how the excitement of one
sense will sometimes act as stimulant for the awakening of another. Now
the sense of taste brought into full activity that of sight. He saw the
woman just as she had looked when he had last seen her. She had not
been pretty, but she was exceedingly dainty, and possessed of a certain
elegance of carriage which attracted. He saw quite distinctly her small,
irregular face and the satin-smooth coils of dark hair around her head;
he saw her slender, dusky hands with the well-cared-for nails and the
too prominent veins; he saw the gleam of the diamond which he had given
her. She had sent it to him just after his arrest, and he had returned
it. He wondered idly whether she still owned it and wore it, and what
her husband thought of it. He speculated childishly-somehow imprisonment
had encouraged the return of childish speculations--as to whether the
woman's husband had given her a larger and costlier diamond than his,
and he felt a pang of jealousy. He refused to see another diamond than
his own upon that slender, dark hand. He saw her in a black silk gown
which had been her best. There had been some red about it, and a glitter
of jet. He had thought it a magnificent gown, and the woman in it like
a princess. He could see her leaning back, in her long slim grace, in a
corner of a sofa, and the soft dark folds starry with jet sweeping over
her knees and just allowing a glimpse of one little foot. Her feet had
been charming, very small and highly arched. Then he remembered that
that evening they had been to a concert in the town hall, and that
afterward they had partaken of an oyster stew in a little restaurant.
Then back his mind traveled