Gaspard Dufour, whose accumulations of tissue appeared to serve him a good turn, as he the steep, rocky ravine, hummed a which was broken at by missteps and down-sittings and side-wise bumps against the crags. He freely, mopping his brow meantime with a vast silk kerchief that hung loosely about his short neck.  
The wood grew as he descended and a damp, mouldy odor the spaces the of the oaks, pines, , and sassafras. Here and there a around a tree-hole or darted[31] under the fallen leaves. Overhead certain shadowy flittings betrayed the presence of an occasional small bird, going about its business of food-getting. The main elements of the surroundings, however, were gloom and silence. The breeze-currents astir in the valley and over the gray peaks of Mt. Boab could not enter the leafy of this wooded . Heat of a peculiarly sultry sort seemed to be stored here, for as Dufour proceeded he began at length to for breath, and it was with such relief as none but the can appreciate, that he emerged into an open space surrounded, almost, with cliffs, but cut across by a noisy little stream that went bubbling down into the valley through a bedecked with ferns and sprinkled with dew from a succession of gentle . The ideal - was this, so far as appearances could go. At the foot of each tiny water-fall was a pool, semi-opaque, giving emerald flashes and silver glints, and bearing little of creamy round and round on its . A thousand noises, every one a water-note, rising all along the line of the brook’s broken current, clashed together with an effect like that of hearing a far-off multitude applauding or some distant army rushing on a charge.
 
So much out of breath and so with was Dufour that he flung himself upon the ground beside the brook and lay there panting and mopping his face. Overhead[32] the bit of sky was like , below a slender glimpse of the valley shone between the rock walls, like a almost to monochrome of purple. A fitful breath of cool air fell into the place, fanning the man’s almost purple cheeks and forehead, while a wood-thrush, whose liquid voice might have been regarded as part of the water-tumult, sang in a thorn tree hard by.
 
In a half-reclining attitude, Dufour gave himself over to the delicious effect of all this, indulging at the same time in the impolite and ridiculous, but quite Shakespearian, habit of soliloquizing.
 
“Jingo!” he remarked, “Jingo! but isn’t this a daisy for trout! If those pools aren’t full of the beauties, then there’s nothing in Waltonian and life isn’t worth living. Ha! Jingo! there went one clean above the water—a ten ouncer, at least!”
 
He sprang at his rod as if to break it to pieces, and the facility with which he fitted the and the reel and run the line and tied the cast was really a wonder.
 
“I knew they were here,” he muttered, “just as soon as I laid my eyes on the water. Who ever did see such another brook!”
 
At the third cast of the fly, a brown hackle, by the way, up came a trout with a somersault and a gleam of royal purple and silver, attended by a spray of water and a short bubbling sound. Dufour struck , hooking the beautiful fish very insecurely through the edge[33] of the lower lip. Immediately the reel began to sing and the rod to quiver, while Dufour’s eyes glared almost and his lips pursed with comical .
 
Round and round flew the trout, now rushing to the bottom of the pool, now whisking under a projecting and anon flinging itself clean above the water and shaking itself convulsively.
 
The angler was led hither and by his active , the exercise bedewing his face again with perspiration, whilst his feet felt the cool bath of water and the embrace of water-grass. The switch of a bamboo rod, almost into a loop, shook like a rush in a wind.
 
Dufour was ill prepared to a polite response when, at the height of his sport, a gentle but earnest voice exclaimed:
 
“Snatch ’im out, snatch ’im out, dog gone yer clumsy hide! Snatch ’im out, er I’ll do it for ye!”
 
The trout must have heard, for as the angler turned to get a hasty glance at the stranger, up it leaped and by a desperate shake broke the snell.
 
“Confound you!” cried Dufour, his face redder than ever. “Confound your tongue, why didn’t you keep still till I landed him?”
 
There was a set against the gray, lichen-bossed rocks. Two men glaring at each other. The new-comer was a tall, athletic,[34] brown-faced mountaineer, bearing a gun and wearing two heavy revolvers. He towered above Dufour and gazed down upon him as if about to execute him. The latter did not , but grew angrier instead.
 
“You ought to have better sense than to with my sport in such a way! Who are you, anyway?” he cried in a hot, fierce tone.
 
The mountaineer stood silent for a moment, as if collecting words enough for what he felt like saying, then:
 
“See yer,” he drawled, rather musically, “ef I take ye by the scruff o’ yer neck an’ the heel o’ yer stockin’ an’ jest chuck ye thet , ye’ll begin to who I air, ye little duck-legged minny-catcher, you!”
 
Dufour, remembering his long training years ago at the Gentlemen’s Glove-Club, squared himself with fists in position, having flung aside his tackle. In his righteous rage he forgot that his was not only his superior in but also heavily armed.
 
“Well, thet’ ther’ do beat me!” said the mountaineer, with an incredulous ring in his voice. “The very idee! W’y ye little aggervatin’ banty rooster, a puttin’ up yer at me! W’y I’ll jest eternally and everlastin’ly yer neck an’ swob the face o’ nature wi’ ye!”
 
What followed was about as indescribable as a whirlwind in dry grass. The two men appeared to for a single wild, whirling, instant, and then the mountaineer went[35] over headlong into the middle of the pool with a great plash and disappeared. Dufour, in a truly gladiatorial attitude, gazed fiercely at the large dimple in which his was buried for the instant, but out of which he presently projected himself with great promptness, then, as a new thought came to him, he seized the fallen gun of the mountaineer, cocked it and leveled it upon its owner. There was a meaning in his words as he stormed out:
 
“Lie down! down with you, or I blow a hole clean through you instantly!”
 
enough the mountaineer lay down until the water around his chin and floated his flaxen beard. Some moments of peculiar silence followed, broken only by the gurgle and of the brook.
 
Dufour, with arms as steady as iron bars, kept the heavy gun bearing on the face of the bather, whilst at the same time he was dangerously fingering the trigger. The , short figure really had a muscular and air and the heavy face certainly looked warlike.
 
“Stranger, a seein’ ’at ye’ve got the drap onto me, ’spose we swear off an’ make up friends?” The man in the water said this at length, in the tone of one presenting a suggestion of doubtful .
 
“Don’t hardly think you’ve cooled off , do you?” responded Dufour.
 
“This here’s spring warter, ye must ’member,” offered the mountaineer.
 
[36]
 
The gun was beginning to tire Dufour’s arms.
 
“Well, do you knock under?” he inquired, still carelessly the trigger.
 
“Great mind ter say yes,” was the shivering response.
 
“Oh, take your time to consider, I’m in no hurry,” said Dufour.
 
If the man in the water could have known how the but of late untrained arms of the man on shore were aching, the outcome might have been different; but the bath was horribly cold and the gun’s kept its bearing right on the bather’s eye.
 
“I give in, ye’ve got me, stranger,” he at last exclaimed.
 
Dufour was relieved as he put down the gun and watched his dripping and shivering antagonist out of the cold pool. The men looked at each other curiously.
 
“Ye’re the dog gone’dest man ’at ever I see,” remarked the mountaineer; “who air ye, anyhow?”
 
“Oh, I’m a pretty good fellow, if you take me on the right tack,” said Dufour.
 
The other hesitated a moment, and then inquired:
 
“Air ye one o’ them people up at the on the mounting?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“A boardin’ there?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“For all summer?”
 
“Possibly.”
 
[37]
 
Again there was a silence, during which the water off the mountaineer’s clothes and ran over the little stones at his feet.
 
“Goin’ ter make fun o’ me when ye git up thar?” the catechism was at length resumed. Dufour laughed.
 
“I could tell a pretty good thing on you,” he answered, taking a observation of the stalwart fellow’s appearance as he stood there with his loose jeans trousers and blue cotton shirt clinging to his shivering limbs.
 
“See yer, now,” said the latter, in a tone, and his light, thin beard with one dark hand, “see yer, now, I’d like for ye not ter do thet, strenger.”
 
“Why?”
 
“Well,” said the mountaineer, after some and , “’cause I hev a ’quaintance o’ mine up ther’ at thet tavern.”
 
“Indeed, have you? Who is it?”
 
“Mebbe ye mought be erquainted with Miss Sarah Anna Crabb?”
 
“No.”
 
“Well, she’s up ther’, she stayed all night at our house las’ night an’ went on up ther’ this mornin’; she’s a literary woman an’ purty, an’ smart, an’ a much of a talker.”
 
“Ugh!”
 
“Jest tell her ’at ye met me down yer, an’ ’at I’m tol’ble well; but don’t say nothin’ ’bout this ’ere duckin’ ’at ye gi’ me, will ye?”
 
“Oh, of course, that’s all right,” Dufour hastened[38] to say, feeling an indescribable thrill of sympathy for the man.
 
“Yer’s my hand, strenger, an’ w’en Wesley Tolliver gives a feller his hand hit means all there air ter mean,” exclaimed the latter, as warmly as his condition would permit, “an’ w’en ye need er friend in these parts jest come ter me.”
 
He shouldered his gun, thereupon, and remarking that he might as well be going, strode away over a spur of the mountain, his clothes still dripping and sticking close to his muscular limbs. Dufour found his rod broken and his reel injured, by having felt the weight of Wesley Tolliver’s foot, and so he too turned to his steps.
 
Such an adventure could not fail to gain in spectacular as it took its place in the memory and imagination of Dufour. He had been in the habit of seeing such things on the stage and of them out of hand as the baldest melodramatic nonsense, so that now he could not fairly realize the matter as something that had taken place in his life.
 
He was very tired and hungry when he reached Hotel Helicon.