Ing 
onis 
h 
We then and there made the important dis- 
covery that, notwithstanding the glamour of 
romance in which the books have enveloped 
them, brook trout are mere fish, after all. They 
swallow a worm with a hook inside just as the 
" sunfish " in the mill-pond of our childhood 
used to swallow a bent pin under the same 
circumstances. We afterward wished we had 
tried a bent pin on the trout, to complete the 
confusion of those writers who have for so 
long a time been imposing on a too credu- 
lous public. 
These thoughts did not trouble us at the 
moment, however, for, after all, there is a magi- 
cal fascination in a brook trout, which can no 
more be resisted than it can be explained. 
Probably no trout is ever half so beautiful as 
the first one caught. Our acquaintance with 
them heretofore had been in picture-books, 
or nicely browned on the table, but here lay a 
live one in the green grass, all speckled and 
coloured like a rainbow, and no wonder great 
Franey leaned out of the sky to see. 
There was but one rod, and two ot us, and 
we took turns and agonised between, knowing 
so well we could get the proverbial big one out 
245 
