CHAPTER II. 



The rain came down in torrents all night, to the very best 

 of its midsummer ability under the specially favoring intbi 

 ences of a forest anil mountain region. lioistcroiis \\~e-t 

 Canada Creek was swollen to a mad river. AYe sat and 

 conversed under the wood shed, all the forenoon : and while 

 the rain still poured we smoked our pipes, told fishing and 

 hunting stories, whittled, and took our turns around the 

 smudge kettle. 



At noon the rain dwindled to a dri/./le, and I. the neophyte 

 of the party, born and reared in a land of minnows, bull- 

 heads, dace and suckers, went up a little stream nearby, 

 and with an extemporized rod and baited hook caught my 

 first 1 u-ook-trout ! It Hashed upon my recollection, (or might 

 appropriately have done so) at the instant of my first 

 'strike, " that there were several quick things. lightning, 

 for instance, the kick of an ugly cow at a milk pail, the 

 descending blow of a school teacher's ferule upon the 

 juvenile palm, the young skater's first somersault, the 

 bashful boy's blush when the pretty girl of the school 

 smiles on him, and all that sort of thing, but this trout 

 was a little ahead of them all. In an instant I had him fast 

 upon the barbed hook. The little spirit of activity at the 

 end of the line fairly effervesced; the small pool boiled like a 

 teapot, for there was a tempest in it of one frightened, craz} r 



