tangled among the roots and weeds at the bottom, without his captor being any the wiser for it.
Miss Mary Jones—to assume a past tense, for these events have long gone by—halted then in her walk and in the song she was singing, in the pleasantest of voices, half aloud, and a little natural color came up into her face, partly, perhaps, because she found her self an object of attention, when she imagined the trees and birds only composed her audience; and partly, because the observation which she had courted seemed unlikely to be speedily withdrawn. The young gentleman, with his back to the trunk of a beech, and his eyes diverted from their proper occupation of watching his float, seemed to relish the effect of his curiosity, it must be admitted, and surveyed the nymph with a smile which would have appeared impertinent but for a challenge at recognition in it when his glance encountered the momentary surprise in those blue orbs of sweet Mary Jones. It did not please the nymph, however, to accept the acquaintance so proffered, and with the slightest possible moue in rejoinder, she turned into a path branching off opportunely from that by which she had approached, and would soon have left the scene of her interrupted solitude, and perhaps the memory of it, behind her. But the first comer entertained other views, it seemed. He promptly rose when about to be deserted, and finding his line tangled, as shown above, without ado snapped it in twain. Had it been too strong for him, he would have thrown the rod and all into the stream rather than be baffled, for it was part of the character of this young gentle man to take the shortest means at hand for ridding himself of the last pleasure in anticipation of the next in order. This done, he presented himself before our heroine, who, to say the truth, had not advanced far, nor seemed in much haste to go. She had stopped to pull a wild violet, but then she had dropped it again; and when she stooped to recover it, Mr. Clarence Van Trump, who was the angler, had it already in possession, and presently protested he could part with it on no terms, and would set it in water when he got home; though I believe he really put it in his vest pocket, and there forgot it, nor beheld it again for many months after all the events in this tale had transpired. This was not all either; Miss Mary Jones
