Other trout, the real, speckled brook-trout, are found in the streams flowing into the lake, and more than one delightful day was spent in pursuit of them. After all, there is no other fishing quite like that. It is not altogether because brook-trout are the cleanliest, handsomest of fish, or that they are so gamey and so toothsome that this sport is easily the prime favourite with fishermen. The brook itself is a joy. Just to company with it makes life worth while. It chatters to you, laughs at you, plays hide-and-go-seek with you, and never gets to be an old story. Sitting on an old root, just where a log fallen across the stream makes a good hiding-place for the shy fish, it doesn’t matter very much whether you catch anything or not. The checkers of sunlight are dancing all about you, a red squirrel is scolding at you from a neighbouring tree, a mink may go stealing by if you are quiet, and over all is a great peace which steals into the heart, filling it with profound contentment.
One day we followed far up the brook, so far that when the night fell and we saw a farmer’s home across the fields, it was deemed wise to seek lodging there for the night rather than to attempt the long trip back to the Point through the darkness. The farmer and his wife were hospitable and kindly, furnished us with an appetizing supper and, later on, showed us to a tiny bed-room under the eaves. It was not the fault of the house-wife, for the buildings were old, but a brief stay in that bed proved beyond peradventure that it had been preëmpted. We did not “fight and run away”; we ran without even beginning to fight. Stealing quietly down stairs we made for the neighbouring barn and the haymow, where we slept untroubled by anything more vicious than an occasional “daddy-long-legs.” Then, in the early-morning, back to the brook again and to trout that fairly tumbled over one another in their eagerness to grab the “Silver Doctor” as the light rod sent it flitting to and fro over the face of the stream.
When one of the guests proposed, one evening, that we all go on an excursion up the lakes the next day, there was hearty and unanimous assent. The lakes that wash the shores of Skegemog Point are only two of a series, all connected by thoroughfares. A steamer of light draught can go the whole length of the chain, some twenty-five miles or more. The next morning proved ideal for such a trip. The sky was a deep blue with just enough fleecy clouds in it to furnish the needed contrast. The wind set little wavelets to dancing on every inch of the lake, but never grew troublesome and unpleasant. The farmers were at work in their grain fields on either shore, the luncheon was excellent, and nothing occurred to mar the pleasure of the day. Why write of an experience so common and so uneventful? Just because of what the day brought to one member of the little company.
Among the excursionists was a man in middle life whose mother had gone home to God the previous Christmas-time. He had seen the light go out of her eyes, had held her hand in his as she breathed her last, had stood by the new-made grave in the village cemetery as they lowered the casket into the earth. The snow lay deep upon the ground and was steadily falling as the friends turned away from the burial and, Christian man though he was, that son could not feel that his mother was. Have you ever felt that one who has been a part of your life, is not only dead, but has utterly and entirely ceased to be? He told himself that she whom he had loved so passionately was safe in our Father’s house, and he believed it—but he could not feel it. The days and weeks and months had come and gone, and still there had come to his heart—whatever his head might affirm—no comforting sense that his mother still lived, safe-sheltered in a better country. He was sitting by himself that day, far up in the bow of the boat, drinking in the beauty of earth and sky and lake. It all brought back other and golden days when he and his mother had been together on the majestic St. Lawrence, and then, all at once—She was at hand. He felt her presence like a benediction. He heard no voice, saw no vision; but somehow his soul sensed her nearness, and his sore heart knew a comfort that has never departed and never lessened in the years that have come and gone since that hour.
[Original]
