96 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



and their dusky, fragrant depths. Alert and wide- 

 eyed, one picked his way along, startled now and 

 then by the sudden bursting-up of the partridge, or 

 by the whistling wings of the " dropping snipe, " press- 

 ing through the brush and the briers, or finding an 

 easy passage over the trunk of a prostrate tree, care- 

 fully letting his hook down through some tangle into 

 a still pool, or standing in some high sombre avenue 

 and watching his line float in and out amid the moss- 

 covered bowlders. In my first essayings I used to 

 go to the edge of these hemlocks, seldom dipping 

 into them beyond the first pool where the stream 

 swept under the roots of two large trees. From this 

 point I could look back into the sunlit fields where 

 the cattle were grazing; beyond, all was gloom and 

 mystery; the trout were black, and to my young 

 imagination the silence and the shadows were blacker. 

 But gradually I yielded to the fascination and pene- 

 trated the woods farther and farther on each expedi- 

 tion, till the heart of the mystery was fairly plucked 

 out. During the second or third year of my pisca- 

 torial experience I went through them, and through 

 the pasture and meadow beyond, and through an- 

 other strip of hemlocks, to where the little stream 

 joined the main creek of the valley. 



In June, when my trout fever ran pretty high, 

 and an auspicious day arrived, I would make a trip 

 to a stream a couple of miles distant, that came down 

 out of a comparatively new settlement. It was a 

 rapid mountain brook presenting many difficult prob- 

 lems to the young angler, but a very enticing stream 



