WATERS OF YOUTH 23 



of one and a half pounds. This was a triumph indeed, 

 and I was tempted to stop fishing, and carry the fish 

 joyfully home, exhibiting him to all whom I might meet 

 on the way. But calmer counsels prevailed, and, after 

 putting him carefully in my basket on a bed of grass, 

 I tried the runnel again, not in the hope of another 

 fish, but from an impulse to do something. Then an 

 astonishing thing happened. A second trout took the 

 fly in exactly the same manner as the first, and, after 

 not quite so long a fight, was also landed a fish of 

 one and a quarter pounds. Almost incredulous, I tried 

 once more, and hooked a third fish, of about a pound, 

 which got off. After that there were no more rises. But 

 my cup was full to overflowing, for this one day had 

 yielded more fish than all the years that preceded it. 



This success persuaded me that I had underrated 

 the possibilities of the brook, and induced me to fish 

 it with great vigour. But I never saw a trout in it 

 again. The fish I hooked and lost came to an untimely 

 end, falling to the gun of the miller's man, to whom I 

 foolishly and expansively revealed his whereabouts, 

 and I believe it to have been the last of its tribe. 



