case, he
brought the village potentate to mind. And--what was it he was doing?

With an old clasp-knife he had drawn from his rags he was digging bait!
Not as she had dug, with timid, tentative jabs from the point of a
stick, but systematically, thoroughly, just as Monty would have done. He
had found a spot where the earth was soft and rich, and was wholly
absorbed in his task. So absorbed that Katharine felt it safe to attempt
flight, and got upon her feet.

But he pulled her roughly down again. Yet he showed no enmity toward
her, and with the swift intuition of youth she comprehended that he
wished her to stay and see him fish. He, the tramp, was to give her her
first lesson in angling! What, what would Uncle Moses say?

Always quick to see the comic side of any incident, Katy laughed. She
couldn't have helped it even if he had struck her the next instant. He
didn't strike, he merely laughed in response--his first laughter of many
days. Then he looked into her face, stared, and stared again. Stared so
long that Katharine put her hand to it wondering what was amiss. When he
turned his gaze aside he fixed it on the chattering river and became
oblivious to everything else. Within his brain there was working another
memory, evoked by her brown eyes; eyes so like her father's that when
she sometimes looked at Susanna, that good woman begged her turn her
glance away, saying:

"You're so like Johnny you give me the creeps!"

Susanna was often getting the "creeps," and Katy wondered if she had
given them to this poor wretch also, since, though he had seemed so
anxious to fish a few moments ago, he had now apparently forgotten all
about it. She gathered all her courage and put out her hand to take the
rod.

"If you please, mister, I must be going now. Will you give me my
things?"

"Bime by. Wait. Don't talk. In a minute I'll have a whopper."

It was a relief to hear him speak in such an ordinary way. She had
supposed that the language of tramps was something wholly vile. His
voice was husky, but that might be from illness, for he certainly did
look ill. Well, if he wanted her to stay she would better please him. He
would tire of keeping her there after awhile, or so she hoped. Even a
tramp couldn't go on fishing forever, and somebody might come.

He was really very skilful. Almost as soon as Uncle Moses could have
done so he had landed his first catch and left it floundering on the
bank. Katharine had never thought