A LAWSUIT AND A COMPROMISE. 4:7 



rock some twenty feet into a great rocky basin ; then down 

 again over a shelving rock in a fall of twenty feet into 

 another rocky basin ; and then again in another fall of 

 twenty or thirty feet, over a steep, shelving rock, shooting 

 with a swift current far out into the lake. These falls con- 

 stitute a beautiful cascade, and their roar may be heard of 

 a calm, summer evening, for miles out on the placid water. 



" At the foot of these falls, in the summer season, the trout 

 congregate ; beautiful large fellows, from one to three 

 pounds in weight; and a fly trailed across the current, or 

 over the eddies, just at its outer edge, is a thing at which 

 they are tolerably sure to rise. Well, last summer, I was 

 out that way among the lakes that lie sleeping in beauty, 

 and along the streams that flow through the old woods, 

 playing the savage and vagabondizing in a promiscuous 

 way. The river was low, and a broad rock, smooth and 

 bare, sloping gently to the water's edge, under which the 

 stream whirled as it entered the lake, and above which tall 

 trees towered, casting over it a pleasant shade, presented a 

 tempting place to throw the fly. I cast over the current, 

 and trailed along towards the edge of the rock, when a 

 three-pounder rose from his place down in the deep water. 

 He didn't come head foremost, nor glancing upward, but 

 rose square up to the surface, and pausing a single instant, 

 darted forward like an arrow and seized the fly. Well, 

 away he plunged with the hook in his jaw, bending my elas- 

 tic rod like a reed, the reel hissing as the line spun away 

 eighty or a hundred feet across the current, and far out 



