BOOKS BY MARY R. S. ANDREWS

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

THE
ETERNAL MASCULINE

STORIES OF MEN AND BOYS

Jack put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial casts.

[Page [18]]

THE
ETERNAL MASCULINE

STORIES OF MEN AND BOYS
BY
MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1913

Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published October, 1913

In most men worth considering there appears to be, from three to ninety, an ineradicable boyhood. Give the lad, of six or sixty, a horse or a boat or a holiday, and he forgets the world and begins playing.

A list of such men whom one knows would be, happily, an encyclopædia. This book is dedicated to all such, between the lines of the names below. You whom I remember in Kentucky, and You in the West, and You across the room, smoking, and You in the crowded city, and You where velvet mountains rim the sky-line—will know that You are in this inscription. So the inscription goes, with many names unnamed, to a splendid phalanx of young Americans, lately boys in years, graduates of Yale, friends of mine:

E. Farrar Bateson, Lucius Horatio Biglow, Paul Howard McGregor Converse, Douglas Fitch Guilford Eliot, William Brown Glover, Allen Trafford Klots, Francis Ely Norris, George Richardson, Harold Phelps Stokes, Horace Winston Stokes, Francis Berger Trudeau, James Thornton, Francis Melzar Watrous, and Paul Shipman Andrews.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE SCARLET IBIS

THE SCARLET IBIS

The boy stopped sharply in the portage, and swung about and glanced inquiringly at Josef. Light as the sound was, quickly as the boy had heard it, Josef had heard first. He stood rooted in the path, a line of lean strength, in vague-colored clothes, his black locks tumbling from under his battered felt hat, a scarlet bandanna in the belt at his slim waist pricking the dim light with an explosion of color. His extraordinary eyes, very light blue, very large, with pupils dilated over the irises, as animals’ eyes dilate, snapped electrically; his glance searched the woods to this side and that.

The boy had been trained under Josef and knew his ways; he stood stock-still as the guide listened, as he sent that concentrated glance ahead into the confused masses of shadow and brightness and foliage and water of the Canadian forest. It flashed, that blue search-light, straight through tangled branches and across bulks of emerald velvet, which were moss-covered bowlders; it went on deep into the inscrutable forest—Josef’s glance. And the boy knew that he was seeing things in those mysterious depths, and reading them as wild creatures see and read the woodland, as the boy himself, trained woodsman though he was, might never hope to do. With that, the tense pose relaxed, the wonderful eyes came back from their exploring and—gentle, friendly, shy—met the boy’s eyes. Josef smiled.

“M’sieur Jack hears the m’sieur talking?” he asked in French.

Used as he was to his guide, the boy was surprised. “What m’sieur? What do you mean, Josef?”

Josef waved a careless hand. “There is a m’sieur and a guide. The landing-net dropped, just now. It was that which one heard. They fish in the little river, around the next turn, at the Rémous des Jurons—Profanity Pool—one will see in a moment. The m’sieur, par exemple, is large—a heavy man.”

This in quick, disjointed sentences, as Josef talked—much the same way as he sprang from one rock to another in a river crossing, feeling his way, assuring himself of a footing before he tried the next. Josef was shy even with his own young m’sieur, whom he had guided for seven years, since M’sieur Jack was a lad in knickerbockers. It was of his nature to talk in a hurrying low voice, in short phrases, meeting one’s glance with the gentleness of the brilliant, great, light eyes, guardedly, ready to spring back into the cave of his reserve as an alarmed wild creature might hide in its den. Yet he loved to show M’sieur Jack this gift of his, this almost second sight in the woods. It gratified him now when the boy spoke.

“How in thunder do you know all that?” he demanded. “I’m not so blamed slow, and yet I can’t hear any one talking.”

Josef held up his hand dramatically, very Frenchly. “Listen—écoutez!”

Jack listened, Josef smiling at him broadly, alert, vivid. The little river ran at their left, brown-pooled, foam-splashed, tumbling over rocks, blurring all sounds. Overhead, in the tall white birches, in the lower spruce-trees, the wind rustled, and brushed with a feathery music the edges of the tinkling water noises. It seemed, as one walked along the portage—the old, old Indian trail—all beautiful peace and stillness; but when one stopped to listen there was a whole orchestra of soft instruments playing, and any one sound was hard to disentangle. Jack threw his whole soul into the effort before he made out, through the talking water and the wind sounds, an intermittent note which he could place as a man’s speech some distance away.

“I hear it,” he cried out.

Josef smiled indulgently; he liked to teach woodcraft to his young m’sieur; also M’sieur Jack was a good scholar; there was no other m’sieur of the club, young or old, to whom he would give the bow of his canoe in going through a difficult rapids; he had done that with M’sieur Jack. Yes, and also M’sieur Jack could tell if a male or female beaver had gnawed the chips around a birch-trunk by the tooth-marks in the wood; Josef had taught him that. And M’sieur Jack was also capable to portage a canoe like a guide, tossing the heavy boat to his shoulders unaided and swinging off down a trail as silently, as swiftly as an Indian; and he could tie up a pacqueton—and make camp in a rain—and skin a moose; these things and others M’sieur Jack could do, and Josef was proud of him. But M’sieur Jack could not see into the woods like Josef and he was not as quick at hearing sounds—of that also Josef was proud. So he smiled and waited for the question sure to come. “What the dickens makes you think he’s a big man—un homme pesant?” asked Jack.

They were moving forward along the trail, Jack leading, and throwing his sentences in an undertone, as instinct teaches one to speak in the woods, over his shoulder to Josef. And for answer Josef flung out his muscular arm, in its faded blue calico sleeve, and pointed ahead. Jack stumbled on a root as he followed the pointing hand, and, recovering, caught sight of a tan-colored sweater far in front, even now barely in range of sight, hung on a tree by the path.

“It is not warm to-day, par exemple; a m’sieur who is not somewhat fat would not feel the walking in this portage—so as to take off that,” Josef reasoned softly, in jerks.

“Did you see that—away back there? Well, I’ll be—” staccatoed the lad, and Josef grinned with pleased vanity. “Josef, you’re a wizard,” the boy went on. “But never mind, my son, you’ll get fooled some time. I’ll bet he didn’t drop the landing-net. I’ll bet it was his leader-box or his cigarette-case. No landing-net. À bas, landing-nets! You’ll see!”

And Jack kicked at a rotten stump and sent it crashing in slow ruin, as if the vitality in him were overflowing through his long legs. So the two, the boy born into a broad life which faced from babyhood the open door of opportunity, and the boy scarcely five years older, born to a narrow existence, walled about with a high, undoored wall of unending labor—these two swung on brotherly, through the peace and morning freshness of the forest, and in the levelling reality of nature were equals.

The river sang. One saw it—out of the corner of the eye as one walked—brown in the pools, white where it tumbled over the rocks; the rocks speckled it with their thousand gray hummocks; grasses grew on them; a kingfisher fled scolding across the water and on down-stream; in the trail—the portage—it was all shimmering misty greens, with white sharp ranks of birch-trees; the wind murmured and blew against one’s face. Through such things the two stalwart lads walked on and were happy. The unconcerned gray stones of the rapids, which had looked exactly the same on the morning when Pharaoh’s daughter had found little Moses in the bulrushes, would look exactly the same, likely, two thousand years from now—for world-making is a long business and the Laurentian hills are the grandfathers of the planet, and stones reel off twenty centuries with small aging—these immemorial nobodies of an obscure little Canadian river had seen nothing pass by in their long, still lives blither or more alive than the two lads, gentleman and peasant, with their “morning faces” and their loping pace of athletes.

Around a turn they halted as by one brain order. Something moving. In Broadway a man in rapid motion is lost in a sea of men in rapid motion; in the woods a man lifts a slow finger and is so conspicuous that the mountains seem to shout a startled “Look!” The man at the edge of Profanity Pool leaned forward and lunged at his flies hanging tangled around his rod; he said “Damn!” The two boys, whom his movement had brought to a standstill, unseen, motionless in the shade of the narrow portage, shook with silent laughter.

With that Jack stepped forward, breaking a twig purposely, and came out on the rocks. The man looked up and saw him, a bright-faced, tall lad, claret and brown as to complexion, clean-limbed and strong as to build. Something in him drew a smile to the man’s face—it was not unlikely to be so.

“Bon jour,” Jack said with a haul at his cap, and stuffing it into his pocket further; and then “Good-morning, sir. Any luck?”

The man stared at him. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” he inquired.

And Jack, pausing one second, went off into a shout of deep laughter which set the mountain echoes ringing, and Josef, discreet in the background, stepped back a pace so that the strange m’sieur might not see him laughing also. When M’sieur Jack laughed it was impossible to keep as serious as one should.

Squatting in the shadows beyond the m’sieur was something shading off into rocks and foliage; a face stared over the bushes of the “thé sauvage”—the Indian tea shrub with its dim pink flowers. So hidden, so motionless was the man that Jack did not see him for the first instant—but Josef had seen him; there had been a brief half-nod of recognition on both sides before the messieurs had spoken. Jack caught sight of him.

“It is you, Adelard Martel?” he demanded; Jack was likely to know most of the guides in the club. “Why haven’t you got a big fish for your m’sieur? They are here,” he threw at him cheerfully.

But the man did not answer with a smile, as most people answered Jack Vance. The dark, furtive eyes shot a resentful glance at the large man who still struggled with his fishing-tackle. “M’sieur—is not lucky,” he brought out with the broad, soft accent of a habitant, and looked down sulkily, displeased, and then flashed up an angry glance. “There was a big one—b’en gros—three minutes ago. He rose to the fly. One would have had him grabbed—poigné—in a second. But v’là, M’sieur slipped and fell backward and knocked me the landing-net out of my hand, and the big one saved himself—se sauvait. Comme ça”—with a swift gesture of disgust.

“The landing-net?” The boy turned and looked at Josef and laughed, and Josef’s big light eyes flashed satisfaction.

The strange m’sieur broke in with a nod toward his guide. “Something wrong with that fellow,” he commented. “He seems angry that I can’t catch fish.”

Jack leaned over and swept in one of the curly, bobbing snells of the m’sieur’s leader as he answered. “May I help you?” he asked with friendliness of a brother craftsman. “It’s the dickens of a job to do this alone. Adelard ought”—and he stopped and shook his head fatherly at the sullen-faced guide. “He’s sore as a crab because you haven’t had luck,” he explained. “They’re all that way. It’s a personal question—if their messieurs are lucky, you see. He’ll be another question when you take a five-pounder.”

The big man lowered the butt of his rod suddenly, thereby mixing up all the whirls of catgut which Jack had skilfully untangled; he looked at the boy with a heart-broken expression; he looked as if he were going to cry.

“But I can’t,” he said sorrowfully. “I don’t know how to fish. And I want to so much. It’s my first vacation in six years, and I haven’t got but a week. I thought it was easy to fish, that anybody could do it. And I don’t know how to tie the leader on, and the reel falls out of the—the reel-plate or something. And if I touch the automatic spring it all snaps up before I can wink, and the leader runs down the rod through the rings and it’s the very devil. I hit a rock and broke a tip the first thing and had to put in another. It took me half an hour to put the stuff together and then that happened. And the flies tangle—all the time. And my guide despises me! I thought fishing was fun!”

The man’s voice was a wail in the last sentences. Something in the boy’s friendly youthfulness had made it possible to pour out this tale of woe where with another wayfarer the unlucky fisherman would have kept his bitter counsel. His instinct was not wrong. The thought shot into Jack’s mind that here was a poor man, probably not able to afford vacations, who had put his hard-earned money into one and was failing to get the good of it. Like a young knight to a maiden in distress the boy rushed to the rescue.

“Now that’s just too darned bad,” he brought out heartily. “But you know, sir, it’s easy enough to set it all straight. Fishing is fun—almost the best fun going. I don’t want to butt in, but—you see I’ve been at this sort of thing all my days”—one thought involuntarily of Methuselah—“and I can’t help knowing the trick. I’m not a crack exactly, but—well, it’s second nature to me, and I’d simply love to show you if you wouldn’t think me fresh to offer.”

“Fresh!” the older man repeated. “If you would give me a few points I’d bless you. But you’re off on a trip yourself—I can’t take your time”—and the boy cut in there with joyful assurances, which there was no mistaking, as to his pleasure in helping.

“We’re just on a casual two days’ tramp, Josef and I,” he explained. “Nothing to do so’s you’d notice it. We left the canoe and the pack down at the lake and dashed up here for a fish or so.” By this he had the stranger’s rod in hand, a Leonard rod, the boy knew at a glance, about four ounces in weight, the last word in expense and perfection of rods. “Gosh, he blew himself!” was the inward comment Jack made. Josef was somehow present at the psychological distance from the butt as the boy held it in his hand, and while he set the reel more firmly into the plate and pushed the nickel ring down strongly Josef’s delicate, coarse finger-tips were untwisting the three bright flies from an extraordinarily thorough tangle. Adelard Martel watched sulkily out of the Indian tea-bushes; the large m’sieur watched, wondering. With that the lines were free, and Jack swung the butt about into Josef’s ready hand, and suddenly had the junction of leader and fish-line in his mouth and was chewing at it with energy.

“Tied wrong,” he commented thickly, and then had it out and drew the softened strings from their knot. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll show you how to put a leader into a snell.” He held the loop of transparent cord in his left hand and poised the green line above it. “Like this—down you go inside—up you go outside—across you go—then down outside, up—and pull her tight. There you are!” He slid the cross-loop down, and with a jerk it was all undone. “Just as easy to take out as to put in, you see. Want to do it yourself, sir?” And the man, as enchanted as a small boy, fumbled a bit and learned the knot. “Now we’re off,” Jack announced, glancing backward to assure his recover, and sent a skilful line into Profanity Pool.

Perhaps no harder place to fish was in the club. The pool, a black hole in the river, was thirty odd feet long and varied in width from twenty to five feet, irregularly. At the right a large log stretched over the water lengthwise, and under its shadow lurked the big trout. Also under it were snags where, once hooked, the fish ran to hide, and catch the line about the wood, and tear loose. One must keep a fish away from this log at all hazards. Yet across from it were sharp rocks apt to cut fish-line.

“The hole is chock-full of Scyllas and Charybdises, all right,” Jack remarked, pointing out the geography to his pupil. “I reckon Profanity Pool isn’t a misnomer. Lots of cuss-words spilled into this water, they do say.”

He cast, varying his line, varying his direction, with easy skill, over the dark, wild water, all the time telling how and why.

“With the forearm, you know, sir. Don’t put your shoulder into it. And stop a second on your recover, when the line’s back of you. Don’t monkey with it too fast—give it time to straighten out; and don’t slap the water with the flies. That scares ’em. Let the tail-fly touch first, and just as it’s touching lift the tip of the rod a scrap—see!” He illustrated with finished delicacy. “Then it goes down softly. Hi!”

A liquid swash, a break of white foam, an upward snap of the wrist—a trout was on.

“That’s too blamed bad—I didn’t mean to take anything,” he murmured regretfully, but he played it all the same, and in three or four minutes Josef had landed it and held it up wordlessly—a Salmo fontinalis of a pound and a half, with scarlet fins and gold-and-silver-spotted stomach. The stranger was tingling with excitement.

“That’s something like!” he brought out, and then meekly, anxiously, “May I fish now?”

And Jack, smiling his old-young smile, put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial casts. Then “Let her go,” he commanded, and the large m’sieur, trembling with eagerness, was fishing. Jack, standing by with his hands in his trousers pockets, his whole soul on the performance, criticised with frankness. “Now, that’s rotten, sir. Don’t recover that nervous way; that’s what tangles ’em. Just—sort of—rhythmic; back slow—pause—cast; lift the tip a scrap as you touch; just a shiver of the wrist does it. Now—tip up—don’t sag the line; draw the flies along, and wiggle ’em alluringly as they come; don’t let ’em go under—bad, bad! You can’t fool fish if you drown your flies. Oh, well—the tail-fly may sink a bit if you’re after big ones”—and so the illustrated lecture went on, Jack thoroughly enjoying himself in the rôle of instructor. “Ginger!” he brought out suddenly in an interval, “my brother would throw a fit if he saw me teaching fishing. He’s a shark at it, you know. He’s forgotten more than I ever knew. Josef”—turning on the guide—“M’sieur va s’amuser de moi en professeur de la pêche, n’est-ce pas?” And Josef, showing his teeth in a short grin, answered promptly, “Oui, M’sieur,” and attended to business.

The large m’sieur was learning fast. One saw that he had not missed a word of the boy’s lesson or the reason for any point of piscatorial finesse. He made mistakes certainly, and was awkward, as is any beginner at the wonderful world-old game, which has to get into the nerves and the blood before one plays it well ever. Yet he took hold as a trained mind takes hold of whatever problem, with a certain ability and sureness.

“I rather think you must do some things very well, sir,” Jack remarked encouragingly, after a bout of unflinching reprimand as to vicious tendencies of the scholar. “You caught that idea about not getting the line too close, at once. You must be used to doing things well.”

The stranger lifted his keen, clear blue eyes a second and shot a glance at the boy. “Possibly one thing,” he answered briefly, and cast again.

Half a dozen small trout lay on the rocks, strung on a forked willow branch, the vivid, pointed leaves crisp on one side of it, cut by the resentful Adelard, now charmed by the turn of events and eager to be included in them. But the big fish did not rise.

“Bad time of day,” Jack explained. “Hole’s fussed up, too. Have to let it get quiet before the sockdologers will take notice.” He turned to the older man with a certain brotherly manner of his, a manner which lacked in no point of respect, but was yet simply unconscious of any difference of age—a manner which made older men like the lad and like themselves better, too. “If I were you,” advised Jack, “I’d stop now and come back early to-morrow morning, by gray light, and have a try at them. Maybe you’d get an old he-one then.”

A short lecture followed on the taking down of rods, and the etiquette of winding a leader about one’s hat, so that the pull is always from the last fly.

“Where are you going now?” asked the large m’sieur as he and Adelard stood, their butin packed, ready to move on.

Jack laughed and looked at Josef, who laughed also and shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t know exactly,” the boy said. “We’re just ‘loungin’ ’round and sufferin’,’ like Brer Fox. I rather think we’ll ramble up-stream and take the new trail the guardian cut last winter to Lac Creux. I’ve never been there. And then come back and put up our tent on your lake for the night, if you don’t mind, sir. It’s down there now, with the canoe, at the mouth of this little river,” and he stamped a boot caressingly into the brown water, as one pats an animal in speaking of it.

“Put up with me over-night,” suggested the m’sieur. “I’ve plenty of room; it would be a great pleasure. Then you needn’t bother with your tent or your kit.”

The clear eyes met the man’s with frank, pleased surprise; Jack never got used to the astonishing goodness of people in wanting him about. “Why, we’ll do that with bells on, if you’d really like us, sir,” he agreed heartily.

Ten minutes later the two lads were swinging again through the shifting mystery of the portage, following the narrowing river farther and farther up-stream, while the large m’sieur and Adelard, now in a pleasanter humor, progressed down-stream to the lake and the camp.

About six o’clock that evening the large m’sieur, whose name, incidentally, was Bradlee, spread a gray camp blanket on the pine-needles in front of his immense walled tent, and stretched it with care to the foot of a peculiarly luxurious stump—a stump of the right shape and angle and consistency to make a good back for a man to loll against. There is a large difference in the comfort of stumps. Mr. Bradlee sighed an unbroken sigh of satisfaction as he felt his weight settle rightly into curves of stump and of pine-needles and knew that his confidence in both had not betrayed him. It was the only manner of Morris-chair he had about, and it seemed of importance. He had been tramping all the afternoon, and he was tired and wanted luxury; he found it on the gray blanket, with his back against the spruce stump. Luxury, it is said, is a matter of contrast; this man’s scale of such things possibly began at a different point in New York; here in Canada, after a day’s heavy labor in portage and canoe, after coming back grimy and sweating and black-fly-bitten and footsore—after those things, a plunge in the lake and dry flannel clothes and a gray blanket and a stump realized luxury. So he sighed contentedly and shifted his leg to feel how comfortably the muscles ached in repose, as he drew his crowning happiness out of his pocket, that long brown happiness called a cigar. Yet he was conscious as he lit it, and pulled the first delicious puff, that he was still unsatisfied.

“I wish that cub would come,” Bradlee murmured half-aloud.

Behold, around the corner of the spruce point which guarded the bay, dark on the silvery water, a canoe shot forward, swift, silent. Bradlee with one long pull took his cigar from his mouth and held it as he watched. It was a picture to remember—the blue sky with pink and copper cotton-batting clouds; below that the band of dark woods, sunlight gone from them, crowding to the lake; below that the gray shimmer of water and the dark bulk of the canoe, and the double paddle flash of the stroke of the two powerful lads under which the canoe leaped toward him out of the hills. The indescribable intoxication of the Canadian mountain air was about him, immense, pervading; he heard the beat of the paddles and the long swish of the water after each bound of the canoe; now Jack missed a stroke and shot his paddle high in the air in salute, but did not break the infinite quiet with a spoken word.

“Most boys would have howled their heads off at sight; this one respects the sanctuaries,” thought the man.

With that the springing boat was close and he got up and stood at the water’s edge and the bow crushed, with a soothing sound which canoe people know, up the wet sand. Jack arose, stretched his legs, and stepped out, tall and dirty and happy; bare-headed, bare-armed, the gray flannel shirt décolleté around his strong neck, his face streaked with mother earth, and with blood of murdered black flies, but bright with that peace which shines from faces which nature has smoothed for a while.

“Glad to see you, young man; hope you have an appetite,” spoke Bradlee cordially, and felt the place all at once illumined by a buoyant presence.

“Have I?” responded Jack. “Just you watch me, sir.”

Shortly, on the sand by the lake-edge, under a wide-branched pine-tree, the table was spread, with trout still sizzling in the frying-pan and flapjacks and maple sugar and thin fried potatoes and other delicacies of camp, which Adelard and his confrère, Louis, brought in relays, laughing joyfully at the enormous hunger of the young m’sieur. Then, while the guides ate their dinner, while the night settled down like some mammoth bird into its nest over the lonely miles of mountains and the quiet stretch of lake, the man and the boy sat by the bubbling birch fire and “smelled wood smoke at twilight,” and talked fishing. Jack was very great at expounding, and it was seldom he had such a chance; he made the most of it. The older man listened as to the Law and Gospel; it was a memorable evening. The Bradlee fishing-tackle was had out and looked over.

“You’ve got some splendid things,” Jack announced in his uncompromising young voice, and regretted to himself the unnecessary extravagance of a poor man. “But the trouble is, there’s a lot that’s—excuse me for saying it—trash. I reckon you just went to a shop and bought what they told you, didn’t you?”

“Exactly.”

“Too bad.” Jack’s wise head shook sorrowfully. “Wish I could have been along. I could have saved you hunks of money. An automatic reel’s a crime, too, you know. Not sportsmanlike. However—you’ll know, yourself, next time.”

“Thanks to you,” said Bradlee humbly.

“Oh, gee, no,” protested Jack. “You’ll just learn, doing it. Let’s see about that cast for to-morrow morning. Now, I’d admire to have a Parmachene Belle—that’s good in these waters.”

The fine, big, new fly-book was opened, and the man flapped a thick leaf or two and nervously drew out a brown fly. Jack had been teaching him the names.

“Oh no!” the boy threw at him. “That’s a Reuben Wood. Hard to remember till you get used to them, isn’t it, though? Here is your Parmachene—see, with the white and red feathers? Put her on for a hand-fly, wouldn’t you, sir?”

Bradlee obeyed with pathetic promptness, fumbling a bit, but getting fly and snell together ultimately.

“That’s—all—right!” approved the boy. “Now—let’s see. A Silver Doctor—this fellow? Don’t you think? I’ve had great luck with that fly. It’s a pretty decent fly.” The owner of the fly-book took his orders and annexed the Silver Doctor to the leader.

“Now—tail-fly. That’s important. Let—me—see.”

But the willing horse suddenly took the bit in his mouth. Bradlee pointed out a patch of scarlet with his forefinger. “I want that one,” he stated.

The boy laughed. “The Scarlet Ibis?” he inquired, like a kind but pitying father. “That wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. That’s too—crude, you see. That’s good for very dark days and very wild waters, where no one has ever fished, and they’re not educated. I’m afraid they’d know better than a Scarlet Ibis at Profanity Pool.”

But the man, so docile up to now, acquired a setness about the mouth. “I want the Scarlet Ibis. I like the name of it, and red is the color I like, and I have an idea it will bring me luck.”

There was something in the large m’sieur, when he spoke in this way, which made one see that he was accustomed to manage things; this was different from the meek scholar of the kindergarten class in fishing. Jack yielded at once and with cordiality.

“Of course, if you’ve got a hunch,” he agreed with his young-elderly benevolence. “Maybe it will bring you luck.”

And the large m’sieur, smiling inwardly, felt that he had been allowed the Scarlet Ibis by an indulgent superior, yet liked the lad no less.

When the thick mists that had blanketed the lake all night were blowing in streamers along the shore and curving to the alders in the damp morning wind; when the forest was a black mass below, but dividing above into spires of spruce-trees under the mystical glow which fast loosed the night-bound shadows; when the grasses in the little beaver meadows were stiff with cold, wet silver, the man and the boy, leaving the guides in camp, started up-stream to Profanity Pool. It was hard to follow the portage at first, so dark it was; a hush was through the woods; no breeze stirred here away from the lake; no little beast rustled; no bird fluttered; the underworld was fast asleep. One felt like a knight of Arthur adventuring into a Merlin-guarded forest.

Even when the two fishermen reached the pool it was dark enough to make the footing uncertain as one crossed from rock to rock, to the sand-bar where the Indian tea-bushes grew, their small old-rose-colored blossoms frosted with dew, and over them in the dim light the same mysterious stillness, as if the night’s sleep were not yet ended. Also it was very cold; the chill crept through sweaters and flannel shirts, through flesh and blood and into the bones and the marrow, as they sat down to put the rod together. Instinctively they spoke in low voices, not to waken the drowsy forest. Then arrows of sunlight shot and caught in the tops of the spruces and crept ever downward. One could see the quiet pool now, and the dark, wet log lying lengthwise, and the brown water; not a stir of life on that level surface, yet under it the great trout must be waking.

The large m’sieur, casting, with his whole heart in his forearm, suddenly was aware of a small tentative resistance somewhere on the leader threading a shimmering way across the pool. Like an electric connection his wrist thrilled in response and the delicate mechanism answered again with a light jerk.

“Steady,” spoke Jack’s deep, authoritative voice. “Something’s after it—don’t jerk. It’s a big one. Recover—don’t get flustered—slow. That’s a peach. Draw the fly slowly—it’s dark yet—let the tail-fly go under a little—not too quick—he’s after it—let him take hold. Strike!”

With an appalling suddenness Bradlee was aware of a mighty pull of unseen live strength applied to the gossamer structure of his rod and line, and his wrist flew up antiphonally with a good will which luckily did not break everything concerned. The fish had taken the fly under water, as a big one will; he was on—Bradlee had hooked him. But there was small time to dwell on that point, for the fight had begun without preliminaries. Straight for the log ran the invisible streak of force, and Jack cried out in horror:

“Keep him away—don’t let him get under.”

The large m’sieur’s lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes gleamed savagely, as he lifted the tip and held the struggling fish on the very edge of the danger zone. The boy, following every pulse-throb, murmured “Good work,” and with that there was a sound as of a mighty garment ripping and the trout was off headlong to the foot of the pool.

“Give him line—quick,” the boy thundered.

And Bradlee, lowering the rod a bit, let the line run out—and behold the trout turned suddenly in his tracks and rushed back. Only luck saved him on that manœuvre; before Jack had cried breathlessly “Reel up,” the man had the tip lifted and his finger on the spring—for he was learning fast—and the line was snapping back in handfuls—yet there was slack for at least two seconds and it was pure chance that the fish did not shake loose. There was a space of quiet after this—dangerous quiet. The big trout was “sulking.” Somewhere down in the bottom he lay, planning fight in his cloudy fish brain, and it was equally dangerous to let him go on and to stir him up. He might be burrowing under a rock with a sharp edge which would cut the leader; he might rise at an inopportune touch and get free with one unexpected effort; everything was dangerous.

“Just wait,” Jack advised. Two minutes of masterly inactivity and then, out of patience, enraged, the enemy rose to the top and flung himself this way and that, tearing, rushing, shaking his head from side to side in a very hopeful effort to shake out the fly. Fisherman’s luck certainly carried the large m’sieur through that peril, for the most expert rodsman can do little but hold on to his tackle in such tornadoes. The fit wore past, however, and was succeeded by a determined attempt, in a series of rushes, to get under the big log. Jack stood close at Bradlee’s side and counselled him through the sharpness of this battle, and Bradlee’s keen mind bent to the execution of his orders with all there was in it. Add to this that the trout was uncommonly well hooked inside the throat, and one sees that the event was not impossible. The time came at length when it was evident that the prey was tiring. The rushes were shorter and executed with less vim, and the great back came up to the surface at times and flopped over limply.

“Gee!” commented Jack, “it’s the best fight I’ve seen in moons. He’s a sockdologer, sure Mike! All of four pounds, sir—look at him—did you see him then?”

With that there was a sharp revival of energy and a dash to the end of the pool, and a double back, repeating the manœuvre with which operations had begun. The last ten minutes of playing a fish have a peculiar danger in the relaxing effort of the fisherman. Not only does the creature struggle less vigorously and so throw one off guard, but the strain has told and one is tired, and then, often, comes an unexpected strong rush which proves successful—the fish is gone.

The large m’sieur, ignorant of what to expect, did not presume, did not relax, and was not taken off his guard. The boy glanced at the set face many times with benignant approval, as the man, silent, intent, fought the flagging fight as earnestly, as watchfully, as at its beginning.

“Them’s um,” Jack indorsed proceedings, as the big fish flopped listlessly at the surface, and the fisherman yet held his line delicately taut, yet led the live weight at its end this way and that. “Them’s um. Don’t take your eye off him or he’ll fool you yet,” and finished with a manner of squeal: “Holy mackerel, but he’s a he-one—I’ll bet he’s close on five.”

At which premature gloating the trout rose for one last fling and shook his mighty head and slashed with his tail and threw his strong, flexible body in a hundred directions at once, whipping the brown water into foam. The boy, crouching with the landing-net at the water’s edge, followed the infinitely quick scintillations with his eyes; the man, lifting, lowering his rod, keeping the line not too tight, not too loose, followed them, as mere human muscles might, with his playing wrist; with that the long, shining body, brown and gold and silver and pink and scarlet and spotted, stopped struggling, floated limply half out of water, and the large m’sieur, flushed, anxious, drew him slowly inshore. Jack, with the net deep in the pool four feet to the right of the defeated king of it, waited till he was close—yet not too close—till a clock in his brain sounded the psychological second, and then—swoop; the net rushed through the brown water, deep under the trout and up with a sure curve. There was a mad flopping and struggling, but the big fellow was in the meshes and Jack lifted him up, both fists gripping the handle of the heavy-weighted net, and held him so at arm’s length high in air.

“Gosh!” said Jack.

The large m’sieur did not say anything, but he lowered the butt of his rod with hands that shook, and brought out a sigh that appeared to wander up in stages from his boots. His face radiated a solemn happiness several flights farther down than words; his eyes were glued to the landing-net with its freight of glory. He sat down on the rocks with his boots casually trailing in the water and sighed profoundly again.

“I caught him,” he stated.

“Sure,” agreed Jack. “You took him, that’s as certain as the Pyramids. What’s more, you did it in style. The way you played that fish, sir, was good enough for anybody. You may not have experience,” Jack allowed candidly, “but I’ll be hanged if you haven’t got promise. You’re a wonder, sir—a plain wonder.”

By now Jack was squatting before the net, laid on a flat stone; his hunting-knife was out of the leather-fringed caribou-skin sheath on his hip, and he had it in his right hand, the dull side of the blade down, while with his left he gathered the net tighter around the still flopping great trout. The wet, dull nose, the staring eyes were uppermost. Jack gave a sharp rap on the back of the neck two or three times repeated, and the king of Profanity Pool, with a long shiver, was still. Then with big-handed dexterity he drew back the meshes and pulled him out, a splendid, shining creature twenty-two inches long.

The large m’sieur, watching the boy’s expert work, made a sudden movement. “What fly is he on?” he threw at Jack.

Jack, carefully withdrawing the net from its twists and double twists around the tail, around the leader and the flies, bent swiftly, examining. There was the Parmachene Belle, tied in a yard or two of wet net-meshes; there was the Silver Doctor, having run in a half-second a complicated course through a system of the same and caught itself in the snell of the Parmachene. That was all. The lad gave a whoop that set echoes ringing in the dark hills about Profanity Pool and the gully of the little river.

“Gosh!” shouted Jack, while the large m’sieur grinned triumphantly, “it’s the Scarlet Ibis!”

Three months later, on a day in November, a tall young man in good clothes, with a clean face and a hat, swung along a street up-town in New York City. The setting and the costume were changed, yet a person who might have met the bare-headed, gray-shirted, earth-streaked woodsman and his guide in the Canadian forest in August might still have known this correct city character as Jack Vance. The freedom of the woods had not yet left his buoyant heels, nor the breeziness of the hills his physiognomy; by these signs he was the same. But his mind was working harder than it had on that morning when he and Josef had found the large m’sieur fishing by Profanity Pool; his eyes were absent-minded and intense; if one might have listened to his thoughts as his long pace lifted them and him over the pavement, it might be that some such sentence as this would have come to the light:

“Now how in thunder am I to tell if that’s interstate commerce or if it isn’t?” Jack was thinking.

With the same whole-heartedness that he had put into his fishing, into his woodcraft, the boy had now flung himself into the study of the law at that hot-house for starting the delicate green sprouts which are to grow into trees of justice, the Harvard Law School. He was in New York for what he would have described as a “bat” of some days, yet his work fermented in his brain in his holiday. He was finding law, as one mostly finds things done with all one’s might, a joy and delight. Yet for all the fun of it he was badly puzzled just now, and anxious as well as eager. After exhausting the sources of information he needed more light.

“If I only knew a man who had a practical hold on it,” his mind went on, throwing out tentacles to search for help, “an older man—a clever man, a man who—” he stopped short; a brain tentacle had touched something in the dimness. Why had there come to him in a flash the familiar atmosphere of the woods, of fishing, of Josef and the little river and—in a flash again he had arrived. “Profanity Pool! The large m’sieur—Mr. Bradlee! He said he was a railroad man—he said I was to call him up and lunch with him; he said if ever he could help me about anything he’d do it—by the sign of the Scarlet Ibis. Ginger! I’m glad I thought of him. The very chap!”

He dashed into a drug-store and rushed to the telephone-booth. Here he was—Bradlee—W. R. H.—that was the man. Wall Street—yes. And he took down the receiver and gave a number. It was a bit roundabout getting Mr. Bradlee. It seemed that the approach to him was guarded by an army of clerks and secretaries.

“He must think he’s mighty precious,” Jack complained to himself.

One must send a name—“Mr. Vance,” Jack said simply. So that when at last a voice out of the long wire was speaking, the words “Yes—this is Mr. Bradlee,” came with impersonal iciness. But Jack was not given to being snubbed; his theory of the friendliness of mankind prevented that, along with other discomforts. “Oh, hello, Mr. Bradlee,” he threw back eagerly. “I hope I’m not butting into business. This is Jack Vance.”

“Who?” The chilly tone was a bit impatient.

“Jack Vance—of the Montagnard Club—we went fishing—don’t you remember—?”

The identification was cut short by a shout at the other end of the telephone in which there was no iciness or impatience at all. “Oh—Jack Vance—why, Great Scott, boy, it’s you, is it? I’m delighted to hear your voice. I was thinking about you yesterday and of how you fell down on the fly question. The Scarlet Ibis was crude, was it? What have you got to say about that now?”

Jack’s great pealing laughter went down the telephone wires in response. “You certainly pasted me on that, sir,” he agreed cheerfully, and then, “I want to know if I can bother you with a question or two about railroads,” he began, and explained the situation briefly. He had been assigned to argue a case in one of the moot courts—the mock trials of the students—of the law school; it was his first case; he wanted to win it “the worst way”; he was at a standstill about a railroad question; he needed the point of view of a practical experience.

“You’re a railroad man, aren’t you, sir?” Jack asked.

There was a second’s hesitation at the other end of the wire, and the answer came as if the speaker were smiling. “Well, yes—I’m called that.” And Mr. Bradlee’s friendly voice went on: “Tell you what, my son—we can’t discuss law over the telephone. Will you come down to lunch to-morrow at the Lawyers’ Club?”

“Why, I’d simply love to do it, thank you,” Jack agreed joyfully.

“Good. One o’clock. Come to my office. Possibly I may find—somebody who will help me advise you. We’ve got to win that case if it takes a leg—it’s a sort of Scarlet Ibis case, I consider, you see.” And with light-hearted laughter again at both ends of the wire the telephone was hung up.

Promptly at one next day a tall young man of fresh color was handed along with distinguished courtesy from one to another of such an array of officials as guards the valuable time of magnates in great offices.

“Gee!” remarked Jack casually as he landed at last in the private office and the very presence of Mr. Bradlee. “Gee, this is ‘some’ different from Adelard Martel and the tent, isn’t it, Mr. Bradlee?”

On the wall of the office, in a frame behind a bulging glass, hung one of the ugliest and one of the most satisfactory personal possessions which earth affords, a trophy trout set up by experts. Its weight, five and three-quarters pounds, was marked clearly in a corner, above the date, August 7, 19—. Hooked in the grim black mouth gleamed a red fly. This work of art was examined, criticised, and appreciated by the visitor before he took his way with his host through the swarming life of down-town to the great Equitable Building, which held the famous club restaurant.

Three men were waiting in the reading-room as the two went in, three grizzled, important personages, who rose up and greeted Jack’s large m’sieur as one entitled to consideration.

“I want to present Mr. Vance to you,” said Bradlee. “Mr. Howell—Judge Carroll—Mr. Fitzhugh.”

And Jack, gripping the hands held out with his friendly, bone-breaking hand-clasp, failed to see the wonder at his youth on the men’s faces, for the wonder in his own mind that the large m’sieur had found him worthy to meet these bully old chaps, who were quite evidently somebodys. Somebodys—who? He wondered further. Shortly he found out.

“I asked you three here,” Bradlee began, waving a comprehensive oyster-fork, “to meet Mr. Vance, for a purpose.”

A bar of red crept up the clear brown of the boy’s cheeks. He had not realized that these dignified persons had come to meet him! He would have described himself as “rattled.”

Bradlee went on: “It will advance the purpose if I mention who you all are. Jack, Mr. Howell is the president of the I. S. I. & O. Z. D.; Judge Carroll, whom I luckily caught in town for the day, is on the Interstate Commerce Commission; and Mr. Fitzhugh is general counsel of four railways in the West and South. If anybody knows what you want to find out, these gentlemen do.”

“Holy mackerel!” said Jack simply, and flushed scarlet having said it, and murmured etiquettically something about “Certainly am mighty grateful.” But the four, at the awe in the tone, at the untrammelled expletive, at something winning and indescribable in the lad’s embarrassment, broke into sudden laughter, and Bradlee, well pleased, knew that the charm which he had felt in the youngster was working. With that he was telling, what most men like to hear, a fish story—the story of the Scarlet Ibis. Plenty of raps for his autocratic ways the boy got as the large m’sieur told the tale, and once or twice the deep-toned young laughter rang out in a shout which made people all over the dining-room turn and stare and smile. Jack did not see that, but the elder men saw, and laughed too, and loved the boy for it, as older men do love youth and unconsciousness and joy of living.

“So you see,” Mr. Bradlee finished, “Izaak Walton Vance slipped up on the fly and the humble scholar guessed right. But the lad gave me the best time I’ve had for twenty years, bar none, and he taught me how to fish—I consider that worth anywhere from ten to forty million. So I’m his debtor to a large amount, and I want you three gentlemen to help me to pay an instalment on my debt. I want you to help the boy win his case in his moot court up at the Harvard Law School. That’s what you’re here for.”

“Speaking for myself, it will be a pleasure if I can help Mr. Vance,” Fitzhugh enunciated with elaborate Southern courtesy. “And speaking for people in general, they certainly are likely to do what Billion Bradlee asks.”

The lad swung about and flashed a startled look at his host. “Are you—” he began and stopped.

Bradlee frowned slightly. “You’ve heard my nickname, I see,” he said. “You didn’t place me before?”

“Place you—well, I just didn’t, sir,” Jack smiled broadly. “You know, I thought you were so darned extravagant about that Leonard rod.” And Bradlee smiled too, pleased with the comrade-like confidence. He laid a fatherly hand on Jack’s arm.

“State the situation now, Izaak Walton,” he commanded.

So Jack, stammering a bit at first, forgetting himself soon, and, launching out into a perfectly regardless wealth of law language which flowed quaintly from his young mouth, set forth his case. There was a small railroad, it appeared, running twelve miles, from Skaneateles to Skaneateles Junction, wholly within the State. At Skaneateles Junction the road joins the New York Central. A train was made up at Skaneateles, consisting of engine, tender, caboose, four local freight cars, and one freight car billed through to Chicago, via New York Central and Lake Shore. A brakeman on this train was injured between Skaneateles and Skaneateles Junction by the negligence of the railroad company, but also because of his own negligence.

“You see,” finished Jack, addressing the great railway magnates and the interstate commerce commissioner as man to man, “the question to be settled is whether that small road is engaged in interstate commerce, so that the brakeman may recover in an action against it in spite of his contributory negligence.”

“State the situation now, Izaak Walton,” he commanded.

Billion Bradlee, whose nod shook Wall Street; Judge Carroll, who, with his associates, decided every day vast questions of national commerce; and the two powerful railway men listened with careful attention. The four pair of keen eyes were fixed on the boy’s face. The boy went on. His whole personality was focussed now on his argument, and, though in the vague margin of consciousness there might have been a knowledge of the incongruity between such an audience and a case in a law-school moot court, yet the glow of his intense interest in his affair reduced such thoughts to a dim fringe. The boy went on, unembarrassed, throwing his free power into his statement.

“You see, sir—you see, Judge Carroll, the act of 1898 speaks of ‘common carriers by railroads, while engaged in commerce between any of the States,’ being liable to any employee for injuries while ‘employed by such carrier in such commerce.’ The fact of contributory negligence does not bar a recovery in such actions.”

Conway Fitzhugh, who handled railroads in three States, spoke consideringly. “It’s an interesting question. I believe it has never been decided,” he said, and the president of the I. S. I. & O. Z. D. followed him up quickly.

“Possibly there has been no final test case. But if such a position as Mr. Vance sets forth is maintained—if the brakeman could recover—then there is no such thing as the domestic trade of a State. Congress may take the entire control of the commerce of the country.”

Bradlee, leaning back in his chair, laid down his knife and fork, and the perfectly cooked bird on his plate was left untasted. His keen blue glance swept across the table to Jack’s face. Jack, bright-eyed, flushed, slashed off a manful bit of partridge and stowed it away before he answered.

“There’s that view of it, sir, of course,” he answered the mighty Howell respectfully but firmly—and Bradlee chuckled. He remembered a fishing lesson up a little lost river and the odd sensation of being talked to as a novice. He wondered how Howell would take these fearless tactics. The lad went on: “But there’s a good deal of authority on the other side. ‘The Constitution gives Congress plenary power to regulate interstate commerce,’ you see—doesn’t it, Judge Carroll? I think that’s a quotation from one of your opinions, sir. And you may use the analogy of the Safety Appliance act—under that it has been held that a railroad wholly within a State, not even touching the boundary line, may be engaged in interstate traffic. Then there was an example—let’s see—what was that?—it was a perfect peach,” mused Jack, and the four dignitaries waited, regarding him seriously. “Oh, yes—I know,” he flashed at them joyfully. “You’ll remember this, of course, Judge Carroll. The Senate was monkeying with the question—I mean to say, the question arose in the Senate. Senator Bacon supposed a case—he said, take a purely local train from Richmond to Alexandria. Clearly that train would not be engaged in interstate commerce. A trainman injured must sue under the Virginia law. Now suppose a man at Orange Court House puts on a box of cigars consigned to Baltimore—does that immediately change the character of the train? After that may a trainman injured sue under the United States act? Senator Dolliver seemed to believe he could.”

With that there was a battle of the gods. Even Bradlee dropped his spectator’s attitude and descended into the arena, for the point was one which held a vital interest for each of the four, and the lad had opened the ball with a dance of distinguished authorities. Moreover, he had the literature of the question at his fingers’ ends, and his shining spear, bright and new, flashed back and forth in the thick of the fray so readily, so accurately, that no thought of difference in age entered the minds of the older men any more than it did his own. It was suggestive of certain remarks of Kipling’s calling attention to the fact that

“There is neither East nor West nor border nor breed nor birth

When two strong men meet face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.”

So the four captains of industry, men at the very crest of international careers, and the lad not yet at the beginning of his career, bringing only his eager brain and hard-won young knowledge and the tremendous impulse of his enthusiasm, debated together as equals and gave and took pleasure and strength. And the boy soaked in experience and ideas at every delighted pore, till at last the lunch was over, and Jack, due at an engagement, had to leave before the grandees, and stood up to say good-by. In his manly, boyish way he expressed his appreciation of their help, and, as he towered above them all in his young vigor and bright good looks, each one felt, perhaps, that he had unconsciously given as much as he had gotten, and that an impulse of generous new life had swept like a rushing wind into the world-worn minds from his contact.

“I can’t begin to thank you, sir,” he said, his hand in his host’s, and Bradlee’s arm across his shoulder half-caressingly. “I can’t possibly tell you how I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been simply great. I—I’ve never had such a bully time in my life,” he exploded, and the others laughed quiet little laughs of older men, but their eyes were very friendly as they looked at him.

“We shall be interested to hear if you win your case,” the mighty autocrat Howell said. “Bradlee must let us know.”

“Send me a telegram, Jack,” ordered Bradlee.

“I sure will,” promised Jack heartily, “if you’d like it, sir,” and, flushed and radiant and smiling, was gone.

About four o’clock the door in Jim Fletcher’s room up-town—where a club of three law-students held their meetings for study, and where the confrère from Cambridge was expected this afternoon to battle with them over a special question—opened, and three bent heads lifted from a table littered with papers and legal-looking volumes to regard Jack Vance.

“Come in,” Fletcher threw at him. “You’re late. We’re half through. What are you grinning about?”

Jack shut the door inside with an air of reserved electricity which arrested the workers at the table. He came and stood over them and they all stared up at him; there appeared to be something to wait for.

“Gee!” spoke Jack at last. “Guess whom I’ve been lunching with.”

Carl Harrison drew a law-book toward him. “Don’t care,” he stated with disapproval. “Get to work, Jack; we’ve got a tough one on to-day.” But Joe Lewis and Jim were interested.

“What’s up?” Joe asked. “Get it out of your system, Johnny. Who?”

Jack stuck a thumb in each waistcoat pocket and looked “chesty.” “Oh,” he flung at them casually with his lips pursed and his eyes dancing. “Nothing uncommon. I simply lunched at the Lawyers’ Club down-town with four of me pals—Billion Bradlee—W. R. H., you know, the railroad king, and Judge Carroll, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the president of the I. S. I. & O. Z. D., Mr. Howell, and Conway Fitzhugh, the Southern railway magnate—just us five, that’s all. We had some business to talk over.”

And Jack, grinning consumedly, agitating his fingers from the thumb fulcrums, posing his slim figure as near as might be to resemble a bay-windowed alderman, grinned more and watched the effect.

“Come off,” responded Jim Fletcher.

“Stop your monkey-shines,” said Carl.

But Joe Lewis asked curiously: “What do you mean, Jack? Give us straight dope.”

And with that Jack, chuckling very much, told the tale, to the wonder and amusement and awe of the three lads. And then, with a dizzying shift from boyishness to the stress of the battle of life, the shouts of laughter and light-hearted chaffing stopped short, and the four bent, grave and responsible, over the law-books, and the work of the day went on.

And the days went on and the Harvard Law School and its events went on, varying from mere recitations to trials in the moot courts, till a Thursday came, three weeks after the luncheon at the Lawyers’ Club. There was an important meeting that day in the impressive offices of W. R. H. Bradlee. People had travelled from long distances to that meeting; there was a man there from Texas, and Hugh Arkendale had come from San Francisco on purpose, and Conway Fitzhugh had left his home in New Orleans two days before for it. Bradlee, opening the meeting, was making a short speech setting forth its purpose and importance. He had just begun when a rap came at the door. Every one looked up in astonishment; these men were as unaccustomed to being interrupted in their councils as the gods of Olympus.

“Come,” thundered Bradlee in a terrible voice, and an alarmed clerk slid hurriedly in and held out a telegram.

“Orders”—he murmured—“any message from”—and the name was a gurgle and the clerk bolted.

Billion Bradlee flopped the paper open, and, as if a bar of rollicking sunlight had broken into the dull atmosphere, his face lit up, as he read it, with a smile, a most unfitting smile. His clear, keen blue eyes flashed about the company a second, and then, like a boy, quite unlike a great financier plying his mighty trade, he tossed the yellow scrap to Fitzhugh.

“Good news,” he spoke—he was shaking a bit with inward laughter, it seemed. “Read that, Conway.”

The bald-headed general counsel of four railways put on his glasses, while the rest of the august company watched him and waited curiously. With careful, deliberate enunciation, in a businesslike tone and manner, the general counsel read aloud—a picked company of the most important men in America listening—these somewhat bewildering words:

“Landed my trout Scarlet Ibis top of the heap glory be won every blamed thing sure am grateful to you and high mucky-mucks kindly pass on thanks and accept most.

J. C. Vance.”

There was a momentary astonishment on the face of Conway Fitzhugh as he stared over the yellow paper at Bradlee; the varied expressions of surprise on the dozen faces of the other men were a psychological assortment; Fitzhugh suddenly arrived with a jostle of quick laughter.

“Oh—that boy!” he said, and handed the telegram back across the table. “That delightful boy—I’m glad he won his case. Give him my congratulations.”

“A youngster—a friend of mine—and of Fitzhugh’s—” Bradlee explained vaguely to no one in particular, but the smile and the look of clean pleasure were still there, and every one felt at once as if a draught of sweet air had found its way into the room and had refreshed them.

“Now, gentlemen,” said W. R. H. Bradlee, “as I was saying—”

THE CAMPAIGN TROUT

THE CAMPAIGN TROUT

Josef and I were lifting our canoe into Lac Lumière from the Dammed Little River when we saw paddles flash up the lake. The “garçons,” Blanc and Zoëtique, the brace of younger guides, had been out to the club for mail; as that happened only once in ten days we hustled.

I ought to mention that the Dammed Little River is not so named entirely for love of blasphemy, but because it is little and is dammed—it was over that dam that we lifted the canoe. I’ll grant you, however, that it may add a tang to the harmless stream to call it by the fierce name, and also it makes you feel pleasantly like a perfect devil to swear that way without sin. Anyhow that’s where we were that September afternoon, Josef and I, just back from a two days’ hunting-trip to Lac Sauvage country. I’d missed a moose, and I knew I was going to get jeered when I got back to camp and told my brother Walter, who never leaves much to reproach himself with when there’s an opening for jeerings. But I might as well face the music; and besides, there was the first mail for ten days a mile ahead between two glints of sunlight coming and going—the paddles. So we hustled, as aforesaid.

But Blanc and Zoëtique paddling the home-stretch are hard to beat, and they had landed minutes before we got there, and were making oration with Walter on the porch. He detached himself with difficulty to greet me.

“Hello, Bob,” he threw at me, and “Bon jour, Josef. Glad to see you. Any luck? Wait a moment and I’ll talk to you.”

I sat myself on a bench and stretched my hunting-boots over the landscape and waited per order. It’s good for the soul to hear Walter talk French. He was enthroned in the one store chair, a red rocker, in the middle of the big camp porch, and I’ll tell how he looked, for local color’s sake. He’s a lot older than I to begin with—over forty, while I’m only at Yale—and they made him a judge the minute he cut his teeth—the youngest in the State. He sat there appearing pretty prosperous, with his nice beefy color, and his dark-gray clothes, and his dark-gray hair, for his honors have gone to the outside of his head only. He’s a trifle too embonpointish around the hips, but great men often have a rush of dignity to the waist-line, I notice. The light splashed on his spectacles so that they were all you could see of his eyes, but the glasses seemed full of earnestness, and there was a deep line in the middle of his forehead which comes when he’s most awfully serious. He was this time. I’d have bet on it, when I saw his pipe sitting on his knee like an interrogation-point upside down.

Before him stood Zoëtique and Blanc, dressed in odds and ends; trousers under their armpits, multiple suspenders, slouch hats, a red bandanna, an axe in Zoëtique’s belt, and a caribou-skin knife-sheath with buckskin fringe in Blanc’s. Rummage-sale effects. For all that Zoëtique’s got a figure which any athlete might envy, deep-shouldered, small-waisted, musclely—and Blanc moves like a greyhound, all steel springs and lightness. They stood respectfully in front of the red rocking-chair, and behind them two miles of lake stretched from the camp porch to the everlasting hills. In musical, incorrect French, with the nice polite manner all these habitants have, Zoëtique was getting to the end of a story, as I gathered, about a fish. That made it clear why Walter’s soul-depths were bubbling and he couldn’t pay attention to me. He’s keen for fishing. He’d rather fish than be President—rather than shoot the biggest bull moose on record. He had the package of letters in his hands, the first in ten days; around him were piled rolls of newspapers, and he hadn’t heard a new in all that time—but nothing mattered. Nothing but Zoëtique’s fish-story.

When Zoëtique’s crisp, rippling sort of low voice stopped, Walter leaned forward and got ready with anxious care to talk. To talk French was a necessity, for the men didn’t understand English, and I could see him working his intellect. He usually helps himself to the French dictionary and kicks it, and calls that conversation, but this was different. This was about a fish—it was important to be understood.

“Si je comprenne, Zoëtique. Comme celà. Vous l’avez view sortir à le Remous Doré, yune gros poison—gros grosse—vous disons celà?”

I yelped a short yelp. The guides canvassed the sentence with perfect gravity. I could see them guessing. “View” they recognized as “vu,” I was sure; and “yune poison,” was a fish, “un poisson”; these transformations they’d run up against before. But “sortir” stumped them a minute. They looked at each other trying to remember if they’d seen a big fish go out—sortir. Then Blanc got it—it was “jump”—“sauter.”

“But, yes, M’sieur, it is true that one saw a big fish jump—at the Golden Pool—as one passed. A very big one—b’en gros—gros de même”—and the knotty hands of Blanc measured a hearty three feet.

“Great Scott!” gasped Walter excitedly, taking it all verbatim as he does a fish-story. “Holy Moses! it’s a six-pounder, at least!”

And with that the French language was batted through a game. A Parisian would have sobbed. But Walter got his questions out of his system, and I pulled him from one or two sad holes by the boots. And then the garçons raconté-d over again for me how they had been passing the Golden Pool—the Remous Doré—on their way up from the club with the mail and provisions, and had been brought to a dead stop by an enormous splash in the water. Zoëtique specified that it was “épouvantable,” and Blanc, with gestures of hands and shoulders, told how he was so scared blue that he spilled into a two-foot hole, and the pack slid off him. Then the trout came up again, and concerning that appearance they gave measurements. They had him half the length of a canoe, and ten pounds heavy, by egging each other on a little, and Walter didn’t doubt a syllable; he didn’t want to.

“Je vous dites ce que nous faisait,” he addressed them enthusiastically.

Then he arranged, with further language, that the three, he and Blanc and Zoëtique, should go down to the Golden Pool the next afternoon and collar that fish. Then he let the men loose, and they dissolved into the woods toward their own camp, and Walter glared at me joyfully through his goggles.

“Bob, it’s a sockdologer; it’s the one that nibbled at my fly two weeks ago, and I couldn’t get him on. But it was hot, then, and low water, and lots of flies for the fish to fill up on. Now it’s cold, and they’re gathering in the deep holes, and the flies are frozen out—I’ll get him.”

“Please the pigs, you will,” agreed I. “Sounds like an old he-one, doesn’t it? And Zoëtique never does lie as well as the rest. Give me my letters, won’t you?” and with that he came to.

“Well, Bobby, I haven’t heard about your trip. Did you have a good time? How was the water on Lac à l’Isles? Have the beaver raised it? And did you see anything? Get a shot?”

My time was come, so I unbosomed my sorrow, and Walter was decent at first and said we all knew what it was to miss, and likely the sights of my rifle were wrong, as Josef suggested, and shooting from a canoe was hell anyhow, and these Frenchmen couldn’t hold a boat still—and all such things. When you shoot crooked there are just so many excuses from which your friends will choose comfort to offer up to you, and you knew beforehand which. But the feeling left is the same. If you’ve missed, you’ve missed, and nothing alters that fundamental grief and the yearning for blood and one more shot, which remains. And conversely, if you’ve hit you don’t give a button how easy the shot was, or how many times you pumped your gun to do it. There’s a profound peace in the pit of your being that religion is powerless to bestow.

So as Walter ran over the reasons why I couldn’t possibly have hit I appreciated his courtesy, and rejoiced to be let off, but I was sore all the same. Besides, there was a gleam behind the spectacles which gave me a good hunch that I wouldn’t be let off forever. A moose—to miss an old bull moose the size of a barn! I couldn’t forgive myself, whatever Walter said, and even if the rifle was gone queer, which it was. I’ll mention in passing that not long after I killed one bigger than the first, but that’s quite another story. I told about my trip, and began on my letters, and Walter took to the newspapers. I heard him laughing in a few minutes, and I looked at him.

“What’s up?”

He glanced at me over a paper, grinning sheepishly. “They’re talking about me for governor.”

“Hey!” I hurled at him, for I was surprised. “You!” And I got up and kicked before him a little. “You! Hooray! Glory has come upon us. And me associating with you just as free—!” Then I sat down. “Tell me what it says,” said I.

Walter read some paragraphs from different papers, and it sure did appear like a promising young boom.

“Why, look here, Walter,” I gasped. “What’s the likes of you doing in the wilderness? Oughtn’t you to be down there fussing? Why don’t you beat it for the settlements to-morrow—oughtn’t we to go home?”

But Walter frowned evilly. “Go home? Not much. I’m going to take that fish at the Golden Pool to-morrow,” he snapped at me. “Besides, if they need me they’ll let me know. Whatever happens, I mean to get my fish to-morrow.”

Then I addressed him. “That’s too ridiklis,” said I. “An afternoon’s fishing—and us candidates for governor! Why, you make me laugh. I’m in charge of you, my good man—”

“Oh, are you?” he inquired sarcastically.

“I am that. See?” So I punched him about a bit till he yelled for mercy. I can handle him since he got his embonpoint. I’m in training, and he isn’t.

“Don’t—don’t,” he howled; and then, as I slowed down, “I do dislike physical demonstration,” said Walter. And I gave him a dig that rounded his sentence up with a squeal.

“That’s all,” I stated. “Just wanted to put you in your place. Am I in charge?”

“Yes, yes—leave me alone, Bob,” he threw at me hurriedly, and just at that second I happened to look out at the lake.

I stood petrified. There was a canoe on it. Now our own guides and canoes were all in camp, and we’re away beyond everybody’s passing. Nobody comes to Lac Lumière unless they come to see us. Who under heaven could be coming to see us? It was five-thirty in the afternoon, and nobody from another camp would arrive at that hour, for it would be too late to get back anywhere. One doesn’t walk portages after dark in Canada. So I was petrified. It was a canoe all right, however, and the paddles were flashing fast; it would be at our dock in five minutes.

“What the devil does that mean?” Walter growled, and I lit into the camp and brought out my telescope, and in half a minute it was on the canoe.

“Two guides—don’t know ’em,” I reported. And then I shrieked in agony, “For cat’s sake—for cat’s sake!”

Walter got excited. “Who is it—what is it?” he threw at me.

“That’s what I say,” answered I. “Who is it? what is it? It’s, a, straw, hat!”

“A straw hat?” Walter repeated, dazed-like.

For, you see, nature may abhor a vacuum, but I’m willing to bet she doesn’t abhor it a patch on the way she does a stiff hat. And there it sat in the middle of nature, the lake gurgling around; dingy, regulation guides dipping paddles bow and stern; outraged mountains rising up green and sanctified at the horizon; and, in the centre of the stage, a shiny straw hat. It was too much. I dropped the glass and doubled with too-muchness. And Walter glued an eye to the lookout.

“It’s a straw hat,” he admitted, and reserved judgment, and went down to the dock, me following in all maidenly modesty.

In five minutes more the canoe’s nose ran up the bank to our feet. We “bon jour-ed” the guides, and then the hat was lifted respectfully and a lanky figure of a man arose to his feet and stood wobbling. The guides tried to keep the boat steady, but he lurched at the dock and slopped over. His forefoot went into some quite wet lake which we kept there—Canadian canoes aren’t meant for doing the tango. Walter and I snitched as one man at him, and yanked him landward, but in the enthusiasm of salvage his eye-glasses jumped him, and according to the law of gravity made for a crack in the dock. And somebody—said to be me—knocked off his lid. It took to the deep and bobbed away riding a wave, and Auguste, the guide, had to depêche like sin to fish it in with a paddle. It was an eventful landing for that sandy-haired youth, as we discovered him to be on the escape of the hat. He squished water sorrowfully out of the yellowest low shoes I ever saw, and you couldn’t cheer him even when I set his crown back on him and picked up his glasses. He just pulled off his hat promptly and gazed at it like an anxious mother and squished more lake out of his yellow foot, and clucked softly—I don’t know how to spell the noise, but it was a kind of a regretful cluck. Finally he got his glasses rubbed and his hat wiped, and Walter and I volubly offered him dozens of shoes, though I knew we’d have to short-come on the color. With the most exquisite courtesy we walked him up-stairs over the muddy little precipice of a trail to the camp, and sat him in the red rocker, and offered him whiskey. But he wouldn’t. Heavings, Maud! No. Not for him. So we fed him Jamaica ginger and hot water, which I prefer myself, if there’s sugar in it. And behold! he smiled like a split in a potato and arrived at the next station.

“I beg you will pardon me, Judge Morgan. I have been disturbed a little by these unfortunate accidents. I have forgotten to explain my presence in your hospitable camp. My name is Spafford. I am head clerk in the office of Bush, Engelhardt & Clarkson. I come from Mr. Engelhardt, Judge Morgan.”

“Huh!” grunted Walter in a sweet way he has, like a cross codfish.

The sandy one looked bewildered. “Mr. Engelhardt,” he emphasized, “the chairman of the State committee. I mean that Mr. Engelhardt,” and he paused to give Walter a chance to whoop for joy. Walter not whooping, he trotted along glibly: “The convention which is to nominate the candidate for governor is on the eighteenth, and Mr. Engelhardt decided yesterday that it would be best that you should be there. You know, of course, Judge, that you are likely to be nominated?”

“Huh!” remarked Walter again, making awful faces, biting his cigar.

“Yes, sir.” Mr. Spafford answered that sound with firm politeness. “Mr. Engelhardt thinks it best.” And that to Mr. Spafford seemed to be final. “To-day is the 14th. If you take the train with me from the club to-morrow night at eight, leaving from Quebec the next morning, we will reach headquarters on the 17th, the day before the convention. Mr. Engelhardt and I planned it out,” and he smiled that split-rock smile again.

For the third time Walter got off that insulting “Huh!” And then in a flash there spread over his face a thick layer of a peculiar sirupy smile, which I knew to mean an attack of pig-headedness.

“I’m afraid I shall not be able to join you on the journey, Mr. Spafford,” he cooed.

Mr. Spafford looked flabbergasted. He simply didn’t know the repartee. That anybody should disobey Mr. Engelhardt seemed one form of insanity. But here was a human being playing fast and loose with the nomination for governor—that was a form even more awful. His pale eyes popped till you could have knocked them off with a stick.

“Are you ill, sir?” he exploded finally.

“Oh, no—not ill, Mr. Spafford,” Walter answered gently. “But I’m going fishing.”

The cigar which Walter had fed him dropped splib on the floor, and the lower half of his mouth nearly joined it. “Fishing!” he gasped. “Fishing! But—but,” hope dawned. Maybe Walter was absent-minded or deaf or something—he surely hadn’t understood. “Judge Morgan,” he began in a first-reader effect, “it—is—the—nomination—for—Governor.” He got into capitals at that point. “Mr. Engelhardt—the Chairman—of—the—State—”

Walter headed him off. “I know—I grasp,” he interrupted softly. “I would like to be nominated for governor very much, but there’s a big trout, Mr. Spafford—are you a fisherman, Mr. Spafford?” he interrupted himself in dulcet tones.

“No.” The stunned one stared.

“Ah! then you can’t really quite understand. I’m so sorry to disappoint Mr. Engelhardt if he wants me, but you see it’s this way.” He proceeded to explain elaborately, as if in court, the situation to that dumfounded youth. Walter showed him carefully how the fish wouldn’t bite of a morning, and so the first time he could take this one would be the next afternoon. He pointed out that he’d been after this fish off and on all summer, and how big he was, and how one could see that it would be out of the question to leave before he killed him. This and more—details about flies and low water and such things.

When he got through, the head clerk of Bush, Engelhardt & Clarkson didn’t know what he possibly could be talking about. Then a bright idea struck him. Walter was a practical joker—and with that we got the privilege of hearing Mr. Spafford laugh. It wasn’t dead merry laughter; it sounded like a rapid-fire Christmas horn gone rusty. “I see,” he arrested the flow of it to explain. “You are jesting.” And with that I butted in.

“Not on your life, he isn’t,” I stated. “But it’s too blamed bad. Walter, don’t go and do such a perfectly rotten—” and at that point Walter’s eyes flashed fire, and I stopped hurriedly.

But I didn’t give in for all that. I can get him to do things sometimes when most people can’t, and I was bound to try this time. So that night, after we’d tucked up the Spafford blossom in his downy guest-tent—and he was horrid nervous about beasts and spiders—I went into Walter’s camp and reasoned with the Judge. I pointed out things which are obvious to the intelligence of a frog, and after a while I got him to shed his sirupy smile and talk sense.

“I’m not keen about being at the convention, Bob,” he explained. “If the nomination comes of itself I’ll be delighted, but I’m not the build to roll logs and keep my dignity. And I don’t care to be led down on a leash by that young fool. I don’t know what Engelhardt means by sending me such an infernal puppy.”

“Ought not to talk that way before a boy like me, Walter,” I remonstrated. And then reminded him that Mr. Spafford meant awfully well, and that it was his proud boast that he’d been sent because of his reputation for persistence.

“Persistence—heavenly powers!” Walter groaned. “I should say he was persistent. Like a terrier this whole evening. Made camp a hell. I’m so relieved to get him to bed that I could yell for joy.”

Back I went to the point. I saw he was only reluctant to go out, not dead set against it, and I thought Mr. Engelhardt could likely judge better than he could. I asked him, and he said yes, likely, and that it was no harm to be there for the convention, only—he didn’t feel like it. And he felt amazingly like taking that trout. Well, I managed a compromise. It was agreed that we should break camp next morning, and go down ahead of the guides early in the afternoon to the Golden Pool, he and I and Mr. Spafford, and there Walter should fish till it was time to go on to the club to catch the train. If he could corral the sockdologer before that psychological moment, well and good. If not—well, he wouldn’t promise, but I had a hunch that if we were all packed up he’d go on. Anyhow it was the best I could do. So I took Mr. Spafford aside next morning and stated the case, with a rosy glow over possibilities; and I warned him politely not to nag at Walter or he’d break for the North Pole, and never be governor or anything else but a frozen corpse.

Next morning we were busy little housewives, bundling our earthly alls into the big canvas mail-bags which are our camp trunks. The guides were flying back and forth, and everybody was bubbling French, and lots doing. And in the middle of it the poor Spafford waif clung to the red rocking-chair, with the straw hat on his head, lost in wonder. He couldn’t comprehend why people who might live in houses with rugs on the floor, and lace curtains and upholstered chairs should choose to do this. I saw him stare at a three-inch hole in my left trouser, where my complexion showed through, and then lift his wondering eyes to my gray flannel shirt, with much mountain wiped upon it, and a red cotton bandanna decorating the neck of it—he couldn’t see through the game. You have to be born to it, or you can’t.

We got off about two, Walter and I paddling, and Spiff in the middle, in the hat. We left all the guides to shut up camp and bring on the “butin.” We paddled two miles down the lake, and then into the river among the rocks—it was low water and you had to know the channel. We shot a little rapids, and the flower of civilization was scared blue, but we made the portage, and there I flopped the canoe on my head and walked off, and Walter guided the steps of the stranger. It’s only a mile down the portage to the Pool, so we got there an hour after leaving camp, and Walter at once paid no more attention to anybody. He began to put up his Leonard rod as if it were a religious ceremony; he does it that way. He had his leader ready, and I saw him meditate on the flies, and then open his fly-box and look it over thoughtfully to see if there was anything more seductive to the troutly mind. I remember that cast; it was a Jock Scott for hand-fly, a Silver Doctor in the middle, and a Montreal tail-fly. That’s the way he started. Afterward he changed the Silver Doctor for a brown hackle—it was a brightish day. The minute he began to string the rod, it came to me that we’d forgotten the landing-net. That was ghastly when we were out for big fish, but it was much too far to go back, and I knew the guides would have it, and so I hoped the giant wouldn’t get on, and Walter wouldn’t notice about the net till the guides got there. And I kept mum, not to fuss the fisherman.

The Golden Pool was named that because it is. In September, when we fish there most, the leaves around it have turned yellow, and yellow only, for we’re too far north for red foliage, and it’s all in a bath of gold light. It’s a widening in the river about a hundred yards across, and a lot of it is shallow, so, of a bright afternoon, the tawny-colored sand-bars show through. And all around the shore are tall birches which lean over, and their thin leaves are gold-shot, and the sun glitters through them. There are alders close to the water, and these are frost-touched too, and the stream rushes in over a steep rapids at a gorge between alder walls. It tumbles flashing around rocks in tier on tier of champagne whiteness, with sherry-colored slides of smooth water, and in the deep holes it’s the gold-brown of brandy. Flecks of foam whirl over the surface, and under the bushes at the edge lie feathery hunks of it like piles of whipped cream a foot square. As you get to the place from the shadow and quiet of the woods, you seem to have come into a shower of glancing light and movement and excitement. You breathe in autumn and energy sharply. Yet it’s all as still and remote as the big shadows on the mountains. That’s the Golden Pool, and that’s where we got, the afternoon of September 15, when my brother squatted on the rocks, and put up and strung his rod.

The reel sang as the first line ran, and the snells fell stiff and curly—but not over the hole—trust Walter not to stir up that hole till he was ready for business. In two or three casts the snells were wet, and the flies spun out on the brown, foam-spotted water. And then Walter cast carefully at the edge of the real fishing-ground. Along the left-hand side of the Pool the bottom is all big rocks, and in between are deep, cold holes, and there the big trout lie—never many, yet every year two or three good ones are taken by the few who know the secret, from a place about twenty feet square. It’s ticklish fishing, for there are sharp edges to the rocks for an educated fish to dodge under, and more than once a leader has been cut in two by a jerk from a fish that knew his business; and many’s the fly yanked off around those edges. So it’s skill against skill, man with his clumsy inventions against trout with his exquisite instinct—human brains out of their element against trout cleverness in its stronghold. That’s the way it is when you go fishing in the Golden Pool.

Walter cast his prettiest from the first, and that’s very pretty casting indeed. The dim-colored Jock Scott danced delicately toward us as he lifted the tip of the rod, hardly touching the surface; the Silver Doctor just wet its bluish, silverish wings, and the Montreal, with its streak of purple-red, dragged a bit in the water; big trout are more likely to take a fly underneath than to jump for it. It was all done in regulation form, slow recover, wrist motion only, sidewise jiggle as the flies came in, a lengthening line covering the hole slowly from side to side. Close back of us was the forest, with just a few yards of big rocks and low bushes for clear space; the recover, you’ll see, was a critical business. It was mighty easy to catch a fly in one of those alders or on a fringe of tree, but Walter didn’t catch once. He’s a shark at the job. However, it was too early; the sun was too strong; nothing doing. So, after half an hour of exhibition casting:

“Take me across, Bob,” said Walter, his eyes still fast on the Pool.

So I slid the canoe in, away off one side, awfully cautiously so no ripple would disturb the sacred and holy twenty feet square. And Walter stepped in the bow, and I slid the paddle into the water without a splash, and in two or three careful strokes I had him over at the farther side of the pond, well away, but yet within casting distance of the hole. “Zip” went the reel, with the businesslike, sharp, soft sound which means it’s well oiled and well wound and well managed. It’s a joy to hear Walter’s reel. Out flew the nine-foot line of light which was the leader, and over the brown water danced three spots of color which were the flies. And then I saw Walter’s fist jerk back about two inches, hard, and my eyes jumped to the leader, and the hand-fly was taut, and there was a bunch of white foam where it should have been, and a great bubbling of water, and the Silver Doctor and the Montreal were floating loose, and the kicking and bubbling and struggling were stronger each second. A fish was on the Jock Scott, and Walter had hooked him. I watched about thirty seconds with my heart in my mouth, and then I knew it wasn’t what we were after. And with that Walter gave his pretty grunt.

“Huh!” he said, and began to reel in, casual-like.

“Smoll feesh?” I asked, as Blanc talks English.

“Yes, the little cuss,” Walter murmured, and yanked up alongside the boat a three-quarter-pound trout.

“Want to keep him?”

“Heavens, no!” said Walter with contempt.

So I laid the paddle in the boat, and wet my hands in the stream, because if you don’t do that your touch will take off the overcoat of slime that’s necessary to a fish’s life, and he’ll die. If I’d wanted to keep that fish I couldn’t have landed him without a net. He was hooked by just a thread in the upper part of the mouth. But I got the hook out gingerly, and presented him with the freedom of the pool, and he slid off with no remarks. He lived all right. Then big brother proceeded to disgust himself and me by taking rapidly, one after another, five half and quarter pounders. I threw them all in, and, seeing we were too popular with the small game, we moseyed back to the rocks.

Meanwhile, all this time the outcast from civilization was sitting on my sweater on a rock, gazing in wonder at the lunatics. If it hadn’t been for the infallible Mr. Engelhardt, I’ll bet he’d have shaken Walter as no fit thing for governor, but as Mr. Engelhardt said he was, why, he was. Somehow, because the chairman of the State committee ruled the cosmos, and said so, Walter had to be nominated. So he sat, and just wondered. I thought I’d try to open a dark side of life to his vision—be a missionary, as it were. Walter had brought the rod-case, and I dug out an old fly-rod and strung it, and put on a leader and three flamboyant flies—a Scarlet Ibis, and a Grisly King, and a White Moth—regular flag effect. Then I charmed him with kind words to follow me down the pool a way, and he followed, lamentably complaining. He fell into holes. At last I got him where he couldn’t hurt the fishing, and I showed him how not to hook the tree tops, and how to work the automatic reel, and then I put the rod in his virgin hands and said, “Fire away.”

For about three casts he was doing it to oblige me. Then an infant trout, out of an asylum for feeble-minded orphan fish, jumped at the Ibis and hooked himself enthusiastically. And I took it off and showed it to Mr. Spafford—his first trout! And you wouldn’t believe what a hurry he was in to cast again. It sure was funny. But that’s the magic of the game. The primmest of humans aren’t proof against the lure of fishing when they take something. So he took another, and he was a figure of fun, standing on a rock in that wild place in his store clothes, gleaming at head and foot with brightness of straw and leather, prancing with excitement, and casting very fast. I showed him points, and he began to catch on, but he threw a fit when he hooked the Grisly King to a spruce-tree, and I had to climb for it.

“If you could go faster, Mr. Morgan, I’d be obliged,” he panted. “There’s a large trout in the pool which I can see, and I want to catch it.” And then a frank groan: “Oh, mercy, do hurry!”

So I yanked the fly off the branch and slid, and he was casting before I struck terra cotta.

About then I began to be conscious that time was passing. I looked, and it was 4.30; the guides might be along any minute and we’d have to go on our winding way in half an hour if we caught the train. I glanced across at Walter. He was changing a fly. He put a Brown Hackle in place of the Silver Doctor. He sent two or three short casts, letting out line, and the reel whirred sharp above the gurgling of the rapids. Then he loosed a reckless handful of line on the butt, and his wrist went back, and the flies sailed high and forward and floated out over the pool and touched without a sound—the Montreal under water, the Hackle skimming, the Jock Scott an inch over the surface. A corking cast, over sixty feet, I reckon.

Suddenly there was a swirl, and the Montreal went under deep, with a steady old he-pull. No mistaking that taking of the fly—it was a big trout. Sometimes a huge catfish will make you think he’s a trout, but you can’t ever mix a trout of large calibre with a catfish. It isn’t done.

I saw the swirl and pull, and I leaped into the woods and heard my scholar fisherman wailing as I fled. I knew that Walter had on the whale, and the thought of the landing-net minus made me sick. I crashed through till I got back of Walter; then I called just a word:

“Go slow till I get the net,” and up the trail I bolted to meet the guides.

Right where the Green Velvet Brook comes in I met them; we call it that because there are yards of flat rocks each side of solid emerald-colored moss. Zoëtique was prostrate on his lungs with his face in the drink; Blanc was dipping it up in his hat; the others were lighting pipes; my eyes lit on the four-foot handle of the net, and with that I lit on it. I grabbed it without breaking the stride, and was loping back down the trail, and not a word said. Those men were surprised—the tail of my eye saw that. I took the portage at a hand gallop, and slowed down twenty feet behind the pool, and crawled out over the rocks to Walter.

“The net is here,” I gasped at him, and Walter didn’t throw me a syllable, but I knew he heard and would be civil when he got time. The brute was sulking. Down in the rocks—blamed dangerous trick. It was all uneven on the bottom, and the rocks were big, and there were deepish holes, and if he could get the leader across a rough edge and yank, or if Walter pulled a bit too hard, he could cut the leader and be off in a second. He knew it too—he was an educated person, that trout. Wherefore it behooved Walter to fish like an archangel.

He didn’t look the part, being screwed into a wuzzle behind his gleaming glasses, but if pretty is as pretty does, he was a beauty. He held Mr. Sockdologer on a short line, just feeling him, and giving him a tiny lift now and then to keep the game going. Exactly the right amount, that’s why fishing is hard; you have to do it right to a hair’s breadth, which is instinct. You acquire it by patient years of losing fish. So the candidate for governor, huddled in a brown lump, sat on an inconvenient-shaped rock and held himself there by one boot planted in the water, and didn’t give a hang for the governorship or the discomfort—those qualifications also go with a fisherman.

I lay along a chosen log six feet back, and watched the battle. And pretty soon I was aware of shapes that melted out of the trees, and it was the guides. They slid together back of me like a group of fauns or other woods creatures only half human, in the shadows, and there wasn’t a sound from them, but a wreath of blue air floated forward in a minute, and I got the dim odor of Canadian tobacco. That odor always seems to me just one remove from leaf-mould and growing ferns and spruce-needles and other forest-speaking smells. So there we all watched, while Walter fought the fight.

And around the corner of the pool, out of mischief, Mr. Spafford, mad with excitement, fished his first fish with squeals of rapture and of agony. I couldn’t see him, but I could follow the plot by the noises he made, and I had to chuckle, in spite of the real job on hand. First there’d be an “Oh!” high and sharp, of excitement and hope—a trout was on; then an “O—O—Oh!” deep and mournful—he’d lost him. Then he’d adjure them.

“Come, little fishy,” said he; “nice fly—jump for fly, little fishy,” as unconscious as a kitten, and as lost in the game. And pretty soon I heard the men behind me giggling softly, and as I squinted up they were shaking en masse, and trying to see the débutant Izaak Walton around the trees.

About then, out of the hidden deeps the whale suddenly rose right at the rod, coming with a smooth velocity that was terrific. The tip went up, and the reel ate line; the line kept taut. But it was a miracle that did it, and if the beast had got an inch of slack he’d have shaken loose; he knew his job, the trout. And the next second the reel screamed, and off he went like a cannon-ball, out and out and out, tearing down the stream, and Walter had the rod straight forward, lowered almost to the water, giving him line by the yard. It was a tremendous rush, and I tell you I was proud of Walter. That minute and the next two or three were the most superb fishing-show I ever had the luck to be in at. For no sooner had the beast run like mad for sixty feet straight from us, than he whirled as chain lightning, and scooted for us, licketty-split. I thought that settled it; no human could manage a line at that angle, I thought. I heard Zoëtique gasp softly back of me:

“Mais, bon Dieu, c’est fini!”

But it wasn’t “fini.” Up flew the tip of the rod; Walter was turning the reel rapidly, and the line was ripping in without a sag, without a jerk—I never saw the equal of it. That, if you please, sir, is fishing. Also it was lightning. Quick! Heavings! It discouraged old man whale. Down he went into the rocks again, sulking, and I knew Walter would rather have him do rushes than that, for there’s nothing so anxious in all fishery. You can’t ever tell what minute’s going to be an earthquake, and you don’t know what jagged edges he’s got down there to jerk himself across, and you don’t dare pull him, and you don’t dare hold him easy. It’s all guesswork, and mighty dangerous. Moreover, for a hole, the hole was shallow, and you had less leeway with the line, and a mistake in gauging the depths would be fatal quicker than in deep water. So Walter had a handful and a brainful.

Into that breathless situation reverberated a roar. “Oh, Mr. Morgan! Oh, Judge! Oh, Mr. Morgan—come and get ME. I—want—to—go! It’s five o’clock! Come, and get ME! It’s five o’—”

And about there Walter looked up and frowned vaguely, and I arose and hesitated as to how to kill quickest. Walter’s eyes strayed back to the brown pool with the white bubbles doing waltzes and two-steps across it; and with that, as I stood reflecting, I was aware that Mr. Spafford was trying to come alone. All of two hundred yards—the dare-devil. I knew it by a crash as of a bull moose, and a howl following. He’d gone into a hole the first thing. “Oh, my! Oh, my!” I heard him moan, and then more crashing, and the guides splashed suppressed laughter all over me, but Walter didn’t hear. His soul was at the end of the thread that dipped out of knowledge at a point of the dark water.

And in a second we were all intent on that same point, for the trout opened up hostilities once more. Without warning he gave an enormous pull and rose to the top and shook himself, and broke water, and beat with his tail, and tossed, and jerked, and rolled, and raised the most dangerous Cain ever, and Walter’s wrist followed the ins and outs of it faster than any mind could possibly think. If your subliminal consciousness doesn’t understand fishing you might as well give up when a trout gets to that act, for no up-stairs thinking-machine ever could follow. However, Walter’s sub-qualities saw him through, and the whale went down again, visibly tired from the struggle.

And out of the woods burst our guest. So sad and bad and mad he was that I crouched before him. “Judge Morgan,” he fired at Walter, who paid no more attention than if a puppy was barking; “Judge Morgan, I’ll say nothing about the condition of my clothes.” So I took notice, and there was a six-inch square tear in the right knee of them clothes, and the piece flopped.

“Too bad,” I murmured, and he glanced at me sarcastically as who should say he knew well enough I’d put that stick to catch him, so I needn’t be hypocritical. He further addressed the court:

“Judge Morgan, I’ll suppose that my discomfort has not been caused intentionally—I’ll suppose that.”

Walter lifted the tip of the rod the least gingerly bit, and promptly lowered it; he was there.

“Judge Morgan, I’ll not further mention myself, but for Heaven’s sake, for reason’s sake, for Mr. Engelhardt’s sake, stop catching that fish and come and catch the train. I adjure you, do not throw away the prize of your career, the governorship,” and that was shrieked in large capitals. His voice trembled with emotion. He thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket, and halted a mere second; then he pulled out of that pocket as he went on—I couldn’t believe my eyes—he pulled out of that trousers-pocket a small, slimy, dead trout, and cast it from him, and pulled out another, and up to six, and discarded them on the rocks contemptuously. And I gasped, and the guides lay down and rolled, choking, but his voice went on in great exhortation: “The governorship! For a fish! Come, Judge Morgan. Be sane. There’s time, but not more than time. We must start this instant—we must hurry—but we can make the train. Judge Morgan, I entreat you—come!”

And that “come” was a howl that penetrated even Walter. When he’s annoyed he’s likely to take his glasses off. He did that now, pulling them away hurriedly with one hand, and staring up at the exhorter near-sightedly, like a troubled bat. “What’s all this?” he growled, and threw me an appealing, irritated glance. “I’m not going anywhere till I kill this fish—you ought to know that, Bob!” and then he put his glasses on and threw one surprised glance at the little dead fishes on the rocks, and settled back to his rod, and I think plain forgot Spafford and me and everything else.

I realized that the universe, barring the trout, had been put up to me, so I took the wheel. “Mr. Spafford, I’m sorry; but it’s no use. Derricks couldn’t stir him. If you want to go on, you can take two guides and make the train all right. I’m awfully sorry, but my brother wouldn’t drop his rod, as things stand, to be made czar; we might as well give up.”

“But it’s insanity! It’s—it’s criminal! It’s—”