the whole worthless lot?" Bartamon demurred:
the rod had been a good rod, it had been given to
him in the past by a mayor, or had it been a senator?
It was not like common rods, made of six strips of
bamboo, but of eight, the line was silk... He
would take sixty cents.

Delaying his expression of gratitude to the priest
-- he could stop on his return with trout -- Gordon
was soon tramping over the soft, dusty road to where
he bordered a stream skirting the eastern range.
A shelf of pasturage ran, deep blue-green sod,
against the rocky wall; to the left, through scattered
trees, the valley was visible; on the right the range
mounted precipitant, verdant, to its far crown. The
stream, now torn to white foam on a rocky descent,
now swept with a glassy rush between level, green
banks, now moved slowly in a deep-shaded pool,
where gleaming bubbles held filmed sliding replicas
of the banks, the trees, the sky.

The sun, growing less a source of light than a
brilliant circle of carmine, almost touched the western
range; the shadow troop swept down the slope
and lengthened across the valley; cut by the trunks
of trees the light fell in dusty gold bars across the
water. Gordon drew the line through the dipping
tip, knotting on three of the flies. Then he quietly
followed the stream to where it fell into a circular,
stone-bound basin. He made his cast with a quick

[[113]]

p112 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p113w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p114

v?