' drive, finished by
turning out of the high road and galloping down a sandy track, across a
rustic bridge, and through a charming plantation.

On a knoll, surrounded by thickets just showing leaf, stood a neat
wooden structure with a veranda running around it. A couple of setters
and a pointer in a kennel welcomed us by frantic barking, but for the
time that was the only sign or sound of life. We were in a sylvan
solitude, and somewhere near was heard the musical flow of water
through the tangled copse. The good lady who had charge of the
clubhouse eventually came forward and read the letter which made me
free of the house. It was not, however, till dusk that her husband,
the bailiff, appeared, and we therefore had no opportunity, as we had
hoped to do, of any evening fishing, but we had a hearty dinner,
beautifully cooked and prepared in one of the cosiest sportsman's
retreats I have ever entered. The woodwork of the interior was
beautifully finished and polished; the furnishing was just enough for
comfort; and the bracing air and wafted murmurs that came to us, as we
smoked our pipes on the veranda, were most grateful. Mr. Harris had
kindly put into my hands a copy of his _American Angler_, describing
the birth of the club, which may be taken to be a representative
angling club for city gentlemen in America. It was called the
Quaspeake Club, and the house was pitched close to the Demorest brook.
This was the water the music of which we had heard, and from our
elevated position on the veranda we could see it; a little to the west,
and down below, it broke into a miniature cascade and was then lost
among the low-lying alders which hid the course of the stream. This
clubhouse was about ninety minutes by rail from New York; and in the
season the members escaped from the city by the four o'clock train, got
a couple of hours' trout fishing before night, and were back to
business again by nine o'clock next morning.

CHAPTER XX

A DEVASTATED ARCADIA

Thirteen years ago it was my happiness to spend two or three days at an
angler's paradise, a veritable Arcadia then, in one of the districts
the earliest to be ploughed red by the hoofs of a lawless and brutal
invader in the recent war. In the course of a short month this
fruitful land of peace and plenty, ready for the ingathering of a
bounteous harvest, was devastated by the unspeakable savagery of a
soldiery whose name will henceforth be a byword amongst a