But the fishing did not go well. To properly cast a trout-fly, one's
thoughts must be upon the art. A preoccupied mind and wandering attention
tends to a tangled line, a snarled leader, and all sorts of aggravating
complications. Sibyl--usually so skillful at this most delicate of
sports--was as inaccurate and awkward, this day, as the merest tyro. The
many pools and falls and swirling eddies of Clear Creek held for her, now,
memories more attractive, by far, than the wary trout they sheltered. The
familiar spots she had known since childhood were haunted by a something
that made them seem new and strange.
At last,--thoroughly angry with her inability to control her mood, and
half ashamed of the thoughts that forced themselves so insistently upon
her; with her nerves and muscles craving the action that would bring the
relief of physical weariness,--she determined to leave the more familiar
ground, for the higher and less frequented waters of Fern Creek. Climbing
out of the canyon, by the steep, almost stair-like trail on the San
Bernardino side, she walked hard and fast to reach Lone Cabin by noon.
But, before she had finished her lunch, she decided not to fish there,
after all; but to go on, over the still harder trail to Burnt Pine on
Laurel Creek, and, returning to the lower canyon by the Laurel trail, to
work down Clear Creek on the way to her home, in the late afternoon and
twilight.
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