rom any person who might come in due time to take up the
line. With this view, then, he got up, and, stepping carefully on
the thickest grass where his foot would leave no mark, went to
the bank, and felt with the hook of his stick after the line. It
was all right, and he returned to his old seat.

And then the summer twilight came on, and the birds disappeared,
and the hush of night settled down on river, and copse, and
meadow--cool and gentle summer twilight after the hot bright day.
He welcomed it too, as it folded up the landscape, and the trees
lost their outline, and settled into soft black masses rising
here and there out of the white mist, which seemed to have crept
up to within a few yards all round him unawares. There was no
sound now but the gentle murmur of the water and an occasional
rustle of reeds, or of the leaves over his head, as a stray
wandering puff of air passed through them on its way home to bed.
Nothing to listen to and nothing to look at; for the moon had not
risen, and the light mist hid everything except a star or two
right up above him. So, the outside world having left him for the
present, he was turned inwards on himself.

This was all very well at first; and he wrapped the plaid round
his shoulders and leant against his tree, and indulged in a
little self-gratulation. There was something of strangeness and
adventure in his solitary night-watch, which had its charm for a
youngster of twenty-one; and the consciousness of not running
from his word, of doing what he had said he would do, while
others shirked and broke down, was decidedly pleasant.

But this satisfaction did not last very long, and the night began
to get a little wearisome, and too cool to be quite comfortable.
By degrees, doubts as to the wisdom of his self-imposed task
crept into his head. He dismissed them for a time by turning his
thoughts to other matters. The neighbourhood of Englebourn, some
two miles up above him, reminded him of the previous summer; and
he wondered how he should get on with his cousin when they met.
He should probably see her the next day, for he would lose no
time in calling. Would she receive him well? Would she have much
to tell him about Mary?

He had been more hopeful on this subject of late, but the
loneliness, the utter solitude and silence of his position as he
sat there in the misty night, away from all human habitations,
was not favorable somehow to hopefulness. He found himself
getti