FOREST AND STREAM. 
Sept. 19 , 1908 .] 
“Well,” he replied, “you evidently are the per- 
I son who can understand my present predicament. 
I came up here in company with a man with 
whom I have been friendly for a number of 
years. I took it for granted that our regard for 
each other was an outgrowth of congeniality; 
but we endeavored to ‘conform,’ as you term it, 
to each other’s unlikes and dislikes until we were 
both upside down, inside out and our identity 
became completely lost in a sea of indecision. 
This morning we had what an Englishman would 
1 call a bloody row, and now he is going his way 
out of the woods and I mine. Moral: Never 
again will I hunt in couples. 
“I regret to say,” he added, “that this is not 
my first experience with the development of hard 
feeling between friends when beyond the reach 
of an umpire, but it will be my last.” 
I expressed the opinion that explosions of 
feeling could result from any copartnership and 
that a hunting trip was especially inclined to 
make one peevish at times owing to overwork, 
disappointments, fool guides, etc., but probably 
. the law of barter and exchange might be made 
to play a friendly part in such cases and each 
acquire a coveted thing by the surrender of 
something else. 
“That sounds all right,” he said, “but when 
each one places an arbitrary value upon his own 
medium of exchange, negotiations may be pain¬ 
fully protracted or broken off altogether. To 
save myself from the suspicion of being a quar¬ 
relsome person, and to prove that the law of 
barter and exchange may not be applicable, I 
would like to tell you of my former experience; 
not the present one, for that is too near to admit 
of a true perspective.” 
Having received my encouragement—which 
was genuine, because the man attracted and in¬ 
terested me, and I believed his story would suc¬ 
cessfully expose some of his characteristics and 
also the relationship existing between him and 
the woods and woodland folk—he told this 
; story: 
“My friend and I were very desirous of visit¬ 
ing a famous lake, in this very forest, wherein 
trout of a large size were said to abound. The 
equinoctial storms overtook us at the outset and 
the journey of a hundred miles over land and 
water was attended by lowering skies and a long 
succession of heavy showers and much wind, 
which combination did not succeed in uprooting 
our resolution, although it caused my friend to 
balk very seriously on one or two occasions. 
Well, we reached the lake after much sloshing 
through bogs and paddling over swollen waters 
and resolved to rest and dry our belongings in 
camp before dangling our lures before the bust¬ 
ing big fish we had dreamed about. Our hope 
j that in the mean time the storm would abate 
j was not realized, and as our food supply was 
getting very low, we began operations the next 
afternoon by each taking an end of the lake— 
about half a mile long—with the understanding 
i that our reputation as fishermen was staked upon 
the result; and, besides, the vanquished partici¬ 
pant must take a header into the nearest water 
every morning during our stay in the woods be¬ 
fore breakfast, regardless of climatic condition-. 
“Now, my friend prided himself upon his skill 
with the fly and confined himself to this sport, 
while I, preferring hunting, was without rank 
as a fisherman. Our respective guides being in 
volved in this test of excellence did a whole lor 
•) - > 
449 
of jabbering in French and were evidently keenly 
interested in the contest. 
“I threshed my end of the lake all that after¬ 
noon until my arm was almost paralyzed by 
muscular fatigue, and although the guide piloted 
me into every nook and cranny where fish should 
have been, I obtained only two or three feeble, 
disinterested rises. Returning to camp at night¬ 
fall, with defeat staring me in the face, I learned 
that my friend had been as unlucky as I; in fact, 
he got no rise whatever and was much dis¬ 
gruntled about the poor food, beastly weather 
and ill luck after our long journey. 
“On the following day we resolved to ex¬ 
change ends of the lake for a renewal of the 
contest, and accordingly my guide and I sought 
most diligently for trout at the upper end and 
inlet. Toward evening, there having been no. en¬ 
couragement for further work, he, a wily old 
fox whose ancestors among the Huron Indians 
had trapped in this country for generations, pad 
died to shore and followed the inflowing stream 
into the bush. When he again parted the. 
branches and peered at me, the sparkle in his 
eyes indicated the discovery of something in¬ 
teresting and T followed him without request. 
We soon came to a shallow spawning bed in 
which lay many square yards of the bulliest trout 
I had ever beheld. What a pleasing sight it was 
to look down into the clear, cool water to the 
sandy bottom over which hovered scores of fine 
fish, bedecked in the beautiful colors of the mat¬ 
ing season, indolently waving their fins and tails 
to-resist the influence of the current. 
“I dangled my fly before the noses of severaj 
of the choicest specimens, but encountered the 
same tantalizing indifference that their fellows 
in the lake had displayed; whereupon, losing 
patience with the finny tribes, I allowed the hook 
to descend below the belly of one of them and 
yanked him out of the pool. We took turns at 
this unsportsmanlike process until two meals 
were provided for four hollow men, then w<? 
repaired to our canoe and paddled to camp, con¬ 
scious of having put up a mean plot against the 
fish and feeling very much like ‘kill-sheep dogs.! 
We felt so ashamed of this performance, in fact, 
that we resolved to conceal the crime from our 
companions whom we found sulking in their tent. 
When we held up our string of captives and 
suggested that they, our competitors, had not 
exhausted their opportunity of the previous day, 
their countenances betrayed conflicting emotions. 
We mildly laid claim to the championship in that 
particular part of the Dominion of Canada, sug¬ 
gested that an early morning plunge, on the part 
of my friend, would be an appropriate act, and 
announced our intention of abandoning, a pastime 
so facile as fishing for the more difficult and 
manly sport of hunting caribou. 
“There was sleet on the ground in the morn¬ 
ing, and the dark cold water of the lake, seen 
through the raw air, was chilling and most for¬ 
bidding. My friend backed out of his compact,- 
rather to my relief under the circumstances, and 
declared his intention to make a final attempt 
to retrieve his lost prestige. So, the -evidence of 
our crime being- comfortably disposed of and 
THE MORNING MIST ARISING FROM A CANADIAN LAKE. 
