The Autocrat of the Eddy. 49 



I wonder if the old trout remembers my 

 attempt at getting him out upon the bank 

 last June. Cautiously I had crept to a 

 point where the bushes hid me from sight, 

 and slid the tip of the slender split-bamboo 

 rod through the same opening through 

 which the alder pole had been poked so 

 many times in years gone by. With a 

 slight cast, the brown-hackle and coach- 

 man and Reub Wood were tossed over 

 the lair of the trout, and drawn in enticing 

 zig-zags between the foam flecks on the 

 water. It was not the first time that arti- 

 ficial flies had failed to tempt him, and 

 when the cast was changed to a grizzly- 

 king, a silver-doctor, and a stone-fly, he 

 just kept perfectly still, and let me go 

 through all the motions of fishing, as 

 though that were all I had gone out 

 for. 



Under a fungus-covered log I found a 

 handsome pink and squirming angleworm, 

 that did its very best on a bait hook deep 

 down where the trout's nose ought to 

 have been, but there was no demonstra- 

 tion of appreciation on the part of the 



