urb the best pools."

So they passed up through the narrow gorge, where the heavy volume of
water was dashing down in tawny masses between the rocks, and got into
the open country again, where the strath broadened out in a wide expanse
of moorland. Here the river ran smooth between low banks, bordered now
and again by a fringe of birch, and there was a greater quiet
prevailing, the farther and farther they got away from the tumbling
torrents below. But when they reached the Long Pool no fishing was
possible; the afternoon sun struck full on the calm surface of the
water; there was not a breath of wind to stir the smooth-mirrored blue
and white; they could do nothing but choose out a heathery knoll on the
bank, and sit down and wait patiently for a passing cloud.

"I suppose," said she, clasping her fingers together in her lap--"I
suppose you are all eagerness about to-morrow morning?"

"Oh, I am not going shooting to-morrow," said he.

"What!" she exclaimed. "To be on a grouse-moor on the Twelfth, and not
go out?"

"It is because it is the Twelfth; I don't want to spoil sport," said he,
modestly. "And I don't want to make a fool of myself either. If I could
shoot well enough, and if there were a place for me, I should be glad to
go out with them; but my shooting is, like my fishing, a relic of
boyhood's days; and I should not like to make an exhibition of myself
before a lot of crack shots."

"That is only false pride", said she, in her curiously direct,
straightforward way. "Why should you be ashamed to admit that there are
certain things you can't do as well as you can do certain other things?
There is no particular virtue in having been brought up to the use of a
gun or rod. Take your own case. You are at home on the stage. There you
know everything--you are the master, the proficient. But take the crack
shots and put them on the stage, and ask them to do the simplest
thing--then it is their turn to be helpless, not to say ridiculous."

"Perhaps," said he, rather tentatively, "you mean that we should all of
us keep to our own walks in life?"

"I'm sure I don't mean anything of the kind," said she, with much
frankness. "I only mean that if you are not a first-rate shot, you need
not be ashamed of it; you should remember there are other things you can
do well. And really you must go out to-morrow morning. My brother was
talking about it at breakfast; and I believe the proposal is that you go
with him and Capta