ll 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:

"This is the robbers' cave."

"And is it within its dark recesses that we are to eat our dinner?"
Pepeeta asked, imitating his melodramatic manner.

"Yes! No one in the world knows of it, but Uncle Dave and me. We always
used to cook our dinner here, and play we were robbers."

Pepeeta saw the ashes of fires which had been built at the entrance, an
old iron kettle hanging on a projecting root, a coffee pot s