“And if he doesn’t raise a row,” laughed Phil, “we’ll all be sus-sorely disappointed. Come on.”
As they made their way along the shore they cast occasional glances toward Spirit Island, which seemed to crouch in the midst of the lake, dark, silent and mysterious, and therefore intensely fascinating to their youthful minds. In the broad light of day they might show a disposition to laugh at superstitious fancies, but, scarcely less than complete darkness, the shadowy, silent approach of dawn is conducive to sensations of awe and a pronounced inclination to credit the seemingly supernatural. And it is indeed a wholly unimaginative person who has never experienced a thrill over the apparently uncanny and weird.
At the mouth of the brook they were granted nothing but disappointment; the test of various flies failed to lure a single fish to rise to their hooks.
“It seems,” said Springer, “that we made a fearful mistake in bringing Piper with us, or, at least, in permitting him to try his hand at angling. Having frightened all the fish out of the water to hide in the woods, isn’t it pup-possible that, in their extreme terror, they may have lingered too long in their places of concealment and perished miserably?”
“I heard of a man once,” said Grant, “who taught a trout to live out of the water.”
“Easy! easy!” warned Phil.
“This gent I’m speaking of,” continued Rod, a twinkle in his eyes, “was an expert fisherman and hunter and lived alone in the woods. One day he caught a trout, and the minute he saw the creature he knew it sure was an unusually intelligent fish, for it was wide between the eyes and had a high, bold forehead. Fortunately, that trout had not been much hurt by the hook, and the hunter proceeded at once to place it in a tub filled with water. All day long he sat around watching the trout in that tub, becoming more and more convinced that he had secured an unusually intelligent specimen. Swimming around, the trout would occasionally look up at him and wink with such a knowing look in its eye that the man laughed outright.
“In the night, the hunter, still thinking of the fish, conceived a brilliant idea. Getting up quietly, in order that the fish might not hear him, he secured an auger, crept close to the tub, in the side of which, close to the bottom, he stealthily bored a hole that let out all the water without the trout ever becoming aware of it. The experiment proved to be a mighty big success, for there in the tub the following morning the hunter found his trout as lively and chipper as ever.
“After this, having convinced the fish that it could live on dry land as well as in the water, the hunter set about training it, and in a short time that trout would follow him around the camp like a faithful dog. It sure was a right queer sight to see the fish paddling around on its fins in the wake of its master, and it is said to be a solemn fact that the man spent a heap of time trying to teach Trouty to sit up and bark; but as to his success in this there is considerable doubt and more or less disagreement.
“As the warm summer passed, the autumn faded and winter came hiking on, the trout’s master perceived that his pet was beginning to suffer more or less discomfort from cold whenever it went outside the camp; and, having a naturally tender heart, the man manufactured a sweater for the fish, made out of an old sock. He cut holes in this sweater for the trout’s fins, so that it could locomote pretty nearly as well as usual, and the little fellow was right comfortable.