Quill's Window

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE FORBIDDEN ROCK

A young man and an old one sat in the shade of the willows beside the wide, still river. The glare of a hot August sun failed to penetrate the shelter in which they idled; out upon the slow-gliding river it beat relentlessly, creating a pale, thin vapour that clung close to the shimmering surface and dazzled the eye with an ever-shifting glaze. The air was lifeless, sultry, stifling; not a leaf, not a twig in the tall, drooping willows moved unless stirred by the passage of some vagrant bird.

The older man sat on the ground, his back against the trunk of a tree that grew so near to the edge that it seemed on the point of toppling over to shatter the smooth, green mirror below. Some of its sturdy exposed roots reached down from the bank into the water, where they caught and held the drift from upstream,—reeds and twigs and matted grass,—a dirty, sickly mass that swished lazily on the flank of the slow-moving current.

The water here in the shade was deep and clear and limpid, contrasting sharply with the steel-white surface out beyond.

The young man occupied a decrepit camp stool, placed conveniently against the trunk of another tree hard by. A discarded bamboo rod lay beside him on the bank, the hook and line hopelessly tangled in the drift below. He smoked cigarettes.

His companion held a well-chewed black cigar in the vise-like corner of his mouth. His hook and line were far out in the placid water, an ordinary cork serving as a "bob" from which his dreary, unwavering gaze seldom shifted.

"I guess they're through bitin' for today," he remarked, after a long unbroken silence.

"How many have we got?" inquired the other languidly.

"Between us we've got twenty-four. That's a fair-sized mess. Sunfish don't make much of a showing unless you get a barrel of 'em."

"Good eating though," mused the young man.

"Fried in butter," supplemented the other. "What time is it?"

"Half-past nine."

"Well, that's just about what I'd figured. I've been fishin' in this 'hole' for something like forty years, off and on, and I've found out that these here sunfish get through breakfast at exactly eighteen minutes past nine. I always allow about ten minutes' leeway in case one or two of 'em might have been out late the night before or something,—but as a general thing they're pretty dog-goned prompt for breakfast. Specially in August. Even a fish is lazy in August. Look at that fish-worm. By gosh, it's BOILED! That shows you how hot the water is."

He removed the worm from the hook and slowly began to twist the pole in the more or less perfunctory process of "winding up" the line. The young man looked on disinterestedly.

"Ain't you going to untangle that line?" inquired the old man, jerking his thumb.

"What's the use? The worm is dead by this time, and God knows I prefer to let him rest in peace. The quickest way to untangle a line is to do it like this."

He severed it with his pocket-knife.

"A line like that costs twenty-five cents," said the old man, a trace of dismay in his voice....