There is this great advantage in the art of fly-fishing: that while you
are engaged in it you can think of nothing else: it is as absorbing as
love or scarlet fever. Stafford worked his fly steadily and
systematically, with a light and long "cast" which had made him famous
with the brethren of the craft, and presently he landed a glittering
trout, which, though only a pound in weight, was valued by Stafford at
many a pound in gold. The fish began to rise freely, and he was so
engrossed in the sport that he did not notice that Howard's prophecy
had come true, that the mist had swept over the landscape again, and
that it was raining, if not exactly cats and dogs, yet hard enough to
make even the opposite bank a blur in his vision.
But Stafford was utterly indifferent to rain and mist while the trout
were rising, and his basket was half full before he looked around him.
It is wonderful, when you are fishing, how great a distance you can
walk without noticing it. He had followed the winding course of the
stream until it had left the road far behind and struck into a valley,
the wildness, the remoteness of which was almost awe-inspiring; and he
stood still for a moment and looked up at the sky into which the tall,
sharp peaks of the hills lost themselves.
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