Then, as though reading from the little green book, he recited:
"But if the old salmon gets to the sea . . . and he recovers his strength, and comes next summer to the same river, if it be possible. . ."
"Spotty is a veritable salmon," mused the colonel, "even if he is speckled like a trout. I wonder, if he gets into the sea of New York, if I'll ever be able to land him?
"Well, he gave me my life, and I just had to give him a chance for his. It was all I could do. Now to fish and forget everything!"
It was a fair morning in April, with the sun just right, with the "wind in the west when the fish bite best," and Colonel Robert Lee Ashley, with the faithful Shag to carry his rods, creel and a lunch basket, sallied forth from his hotel for a day beside a no-very-distant stream, the virtues of which he had heard were most alluring as regarded trout.
"Shag!" exclaimed the colonel, when they were tramping through a field near the river, having reached that vantage point by a most prosaic trolley car, "this is a beautiful day!"
"It suah am, sah!"
"And I'm going to catch some fine fish!"
"I suah does hope so, Colonel!"
"All right then! Now don't say another word until I speak to you. We'll be there pretty soon, and if there's one thing more than another that I hate, it's to have some one talking when I'm fishing."