[THE REMARKABLE ADVENTURES OF SANDBOYS.]
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
THE LOST RING.
The boys had been discussing with Sandboys on the subject of fish and their habits, and, as usual, the bell-boy was full of information in that connection which he was willing to impart to his happy listeners. They found it hard to believe that sometimes, at the breaking up of winter, Sandboys had with his own eyes seen trout flop out of the lake and climb the bank after a worm that had come out of winter-quarters to rest for a little in the sun, but they did believe it, because he said it was so.
"I don't say that it's a reg'lar fixed habit of theirs, mind you," he added, as if he had no wish to deceive the boys into thinking that trout always behaved this way. "It's only occasionally you'll find a trout that'll do it, and then it's because he's so fearful hungry that he takes a risk. If it was a reg'lar fixed habit, catchin' trout'd be easy work. With a few decoy worms set around the banks o' the lake you could just sit down and wait till they came floppin' out after 'em, and then club 'em over the head with a tennis-racket or a cane. But it ain't, and you might wait a thousand years and never have the luck to see it."
"I'm rather surprised to hear that even one of them has ever done it," said Jack. "I always had an idea trout were shy, timid creatures."
"That's all Tommy-moonshine," said Sandboys, scornfully. That's the sort of stuff poets tell you about trout. Poetry trout are always shy and timid. They are allers lurkin' in the cool blue depths of purkling nooks. They spring past ye like a flash o' sunlight, an' are gone—the poetry trout do; but real trout's different. The trouble ain't the shyness of the trout, but the fact that the general run o' poets don't know how to fish for 'em. Why, there was a poet up here last summer—a feller with three names to his autygraph—and he got me to take him out fishin' one mornin', and I said all right, bait or fly? 'I'll fish with a fly, of course,' says he. 'I hate impalin' worms on hooks. Besides,' says he, 'fly-fishin's more sportsmanlike.' So I got him a dandy pole, lines, and some of the finest yeller sallies ye ever see. Down we went to the lake, and the first thing he did was to ask for an anchor. 'Thought you was goin' to fish with flies?' says I. 'I be,' says he. 'Hurry up and get the anchor aboard and we'll start in.' I thought he was crazy, but it ain't my place to tell guests they're crazy, so I got him the anchor, and out we went. 'Where's a good place?' says he. I showed him, and plump he let the anchor flop into the water with noise enough to scare a whale, not to mention a trout. Well, thinks I, this is goin' to be the fliest fly-fishin' I ever see. I never let on, though. It was his picnic, not mine. I just watched to see what he was agoin' to do next. He picked up the pole, an' let out about fifteen feet o' line, an' then he looked at the fly. 'Where's the sinkers?' says he, lookin' up, after a minute. 'The what?' says I. 'The sinkers,' says he, impatient like. 'Seems to me you're a very careless boy to forget the sinkers.' 'What do you want sinkers for?' says I. He looked at me for a second, an' then he asked: 'What kind of a boy are you, anyhow? What do I want with sinkers? Why, to sink the fly down to where the fish be, of course.'
"That," sniffed Sandboys, contemptuously, "is the kind of feller that says trout is shy. I guess they be shy when a feller tries fly-fishin' with sinkers."