242 SPORTING SKETCHES. 



Then presenting me he said, "Tell me, now, was I right when 

 I assured the general that you had caught one hundred dozen 

 trout in an hour in the Hunterstown river ? I want to know if 

 I am right. I shall start fair if I am wrong." 



" My dear sir, I caught ten doz n and considered I did pretty 

 well." 



The general laughed, and so did we all, at the good fish story 

 of my friend, who replied, " Well, I was not far wrong after all, 

 but it was the confounded 'dozens ' that bothered me." 



He has since left us and no more cracks jokes, or tells good 

 fish stories. 



A RED LETTER DAY : FOUR TROUT. 



BY J. L. M. 



I will never forget that day. Twenty-five years have sped 

 away since, but the sheen of those silvery trout is still photo- 

 graphed on my memory. I was spending the summer at Murray 

 Bay and many a trout in stream and lake had yielded to the 

 fascination of my flies. I went up to the pool above the chute, 

 six miles from the village, the favorite pool of my friend, W. H, 

 Kerr, Q.C., of Montreal, from which he had taken many a lordly 

 salmon. The river there took a sudden bend where a foaming 

 rapid struck a mass of sheltering rock at right angles, forming a 

 broad deep pool some 200 yards in length. It was a most pictur- 

 esque spot. Thick spruce and birch crowded down to the edge 

 of the rocks and threw their shadows over the water. On the 

 other side was a shallow gravelly beach, the very spot upon 

 which to land a salmon after having hooked him in the deep 

 water at the head of the pool. Under the flecks of foam close to 

 the edge of these rocks the big trout loved to lie. 



That day I kept to the deep side and with difficulty clambered 

 along the edge of the rocks between the trees and the water. I 

 had captured one or two small fish and without any great 

 expectations had cast my fly in a listless way over a point of 

 rock ahead of me, into a little angle or nook close to the shore, 

 and was gazing admiringly upon the towering mountains not 



