The Lucky Piece: A Tale of the North Woods

by Albert Bigelow Paine

The guide brought out a crumpled, rusty-looking fly-hook and a little roll of line.

"Take these," he urged. "You'll cross a brook or two where there's some trout. Mebbe you can get a few while you're resting. I'd lend you a rod if we had one here, but you can cut a switch that will do. The fish are mostly pretty small."

The sight of the gayly colored flies, the line and the feeling of the basket at his side was a combination not to be resisted. The years seemed to roll backward, and Frank felt the old eager longing to be following the tumbling, swirling water—to feel the sudden tug at the end of a drifting line.

It was a rare morning. The abundant forest was rich with every shade of green and bright with dew. Below, where the path lay, it was still dim and silent, but the earliest touch of sunrise had set the tree-tops aglow and started a bird concert in the high branches.

The McIntyre trail was not a hard one to follow. Neither was it steep for a considerable distance, and Frank strode along rapidly and without fatigue. In spite of his uneasiness of spirit the night before, he had slept the sleep of youth and health, and the smell of the morning woods, the feel of the basket at his side, the following of this fascinating trail brought him nearer to boyhood with every forward step. He would go directly to the top of the mountain, he thought, find the curious flower or fungus which Robin had seen, and on his return trip would stop at the brooks and perhaps bring home a basket of trout; after which he would find Constance and lay the whole at her feet as a proof that he was not altogether indifferent to her wishes. Also, it might be, as a token that he had renewed his old ambition to be something more than a mere lover of ease and pleasure and a dreamer of dreams.

The suspicions stirred by Edith Morrison the night before had grown dim—indeed had almost vanished in the clear glow of morning. Constance might wish to punish him—that was quite likely—though it was highly improbable that she should have selected this method. In fact, it was quite certain that any possibility of causing heartache, especially where Edith Morrison was concerned, would have been most repugnant to a girl of the character and ideals of Constance Deane. She admired Robin and found pleasure in his company. That she made no concealment of these things was the best evidence that there was nothing to be concealed. That unconsciously she and Robin were learning to care for each other, he thought most unlikely. He remembered Constance as she had seemed during the days of their meeting at Lenox, when she had learned to know, and he believed to care for him. It had never been like that. It would not be like that, now, with another. There would be no other. He would be more as she would have him—more like Robin Farnham. Why, he was beginning this very moment. Those years of idleness had dropped away. He had regarded himself as beyond the time of beginning! What nonsense! At twenty-four—full of health and the joy of living—swinging up a mountain trail to win a flower for the girl he loved, with a cavalcade of old hopes and dreams and ambitions once more riding through his heart. To-day was life. Yesterday was already with the vanished ages. Then for a moment he recalled the sorrow of Edith Morrison and resolved within him to see her immediately upon his return, to prove to her how groundless and unjust had been her conclusions. She was hardly to blame. She was only a mountain girl and did not understand. It was absurd that he, who knew so much of the world and of human nature, should have allowed himself even for a moment to be influenced by the primitive notions of this girl of the hills.

The trail grew steeper now. The young man found himself breathing a trifle quicker as he pushed upward. Sometimes he seized a limb to aid him in swinging up a rocky steep—again he parted dewy bushes that locked their branches across the way. Presently there was a sound of water falling over stones, and a moment later he had reached a brook that hurried down the mountain side, leaping and laughing as it ran. There was a narrow place and a log where the trail crossed, with a little fall and a deep pool just below it. Frank did not mean to stop for trout now, but it occurred to him to try this brook, that he might judge which was the better to fish on his return. He looked about until he found a long, slim shoot of some tough wood, and this he cut for a rod. Then he put on a bit of the line—a longer piece would not do in this little stream—and at the end he strung a short leader and two flies. It was queer, but he found his fingers trembling just a little with eagerness as he adjusted those flies; and when he held the rig at arm's length and gave it a little twitch in the old way it was not so bad, after all, he thought. As he stealthily gained the exact position where he could drop the lure on the eddy below the fall and poised the slender rod for the cast, the only earthly thing that seemed important was the placing of those two tiny bits of gimp and feathers just on that spot where the water swirled under the edge of the black overhanging rock. Gently, now—so. A quick flash, a swish, a sharp thrilling tug, an instinctive movement of the wrist, and something was leaping and glancing on the pebbles below—something dark and golden and gayly red-spotted—something which no man who has ever trailed a brook can see without a quickening heart—a speckled trout! Certainly it was but a boy who leaped down and disentangled the captured fish and held it joyously for a moment, admiring its markings and its size before dropping it into the basket at his side.

"Pretty good for such a little brook," he said aloud. "I wonder if there are many like that."

He made another cast, but without result.

"I've frightened them," he thought. "I came lumbering down like a duffer. Besides, they can see me, here."