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.
The trail up the almost precipitous wall of the gorge at Lone Cabin, and over the mountain spur to Laurel Creek, is one that calls for a clear head and a sure foot.