112 SPECKLED TROUT. 



the little creek that headed in the paternal domain 

 was handy ; when half a day was at one's disposal 

 there were the hemlocks, less than a mile distant, 

 with their loitering, meditative, log-impeded stream 

 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," 

 pressing through the brush and the briers, or finding 

 an easy passage over the trunk of a prostrate tree, 

 carefully 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 dip- 

 ping 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 piscato- 

 rial experience I went through them, and through the 

 pasture and meadow beyond, and through another 

 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 



