"They didn't, either of 'em, say much after that, and all day Sunday George sat around and read novels in the office, and the young lady staid with her mother. They'd quarrelled, that was evident, and on Monday George went back home again, and the young lady said they'd never been engaged. The fact was they'd broke it off!
"And now comes the funny part of it. All that summer, and the next, and three more, went by, and nothin' more was ever heard of the ring. The young lady kept a comin' back every year, but she didn't seem to care anything about nobody. She just staid with her ma all the time, and looked pale and unhappy. She'd never made it up with George, and he never could be got to believe the story of how that dishonest little trout had golluped down the ring he'd gave her. The fifth summer after, he came through the mountains with a bicycle party, and they decided to rest a couple of days here. She wasn't here that summer, so he could stay without bein' embarrassed. The mornin' after he got here he asked me to take him fishin', and we went down to the lake. He was a dandy castin' a fly, an' I rowed him up and down, and up and down, for a couple of hours, and he kept a-whippin' and a-whippin' without any luck. Finally he says to me, 'Sandboys, I'll just try it once more, and if I don't get nothin' we'll go back to the hotel and order our fish off the bill of fare, instead of foolin' around here where I don't believe there ain't 'never been no trout.' I see in a minute what he was thinkin' about, but I never said a word. 'All right, sir,' says I, and he flicked the fly once more on the water, and, by hookey, up came a beauty! It was a reg'lar out-and-out three-pounder. And, I tell you, he had to work to get him into the boat; but as he wasn't no poet, an' knew how it was done, he did land him finally.
"'We'll have him for dinner to-night,' says he, with a proud look—and he did. The fish was fried and served at supper; but when the head waiter brought him in to the table, he hands George an envellup, with the remark that it contained somethin' that had been found inside the trout. George got white as a sheet, opened the envellup, and, by hookey, there was the Mizpah ring!"
"Goodness!" gasped Jack. "Wasn't that great!"
"What did he do?" queried Bob. "Faint?"
"Not he," said Sandboys. "He wasn't the faintin' kind. He jumped up from the table, and rushed off to the telegraph office, and sent a telegram to Miss Emily Harkaway at Narrowgansett Pier, sayin': 'Will arrive to-morrow. George.' And he went.
"The next summer he came back again, and he brought her with him. She'd become Mrs. George, and, by hookey, she had the ring with her; but this time she wore it on her neck, with a row o' diamonds set all about it that would have made that trout blind just to look at it, it dazzled so.
"So you just remember what I tell ye. When people give you that story about trout bein' shy, you can contradict 'em, whether it's perlite for small boys to contradict or not; an' if they take ye up, tell 'em about the speckled highway robber of Mirror Lake. That'll take the starch right out of their theories!"