as ready to work, as interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked
steadiness, persistence, patience. Some tranquillizing influence
seemed to have departed from him. That placid confidence in the
ultimate certainty of catching fish, which is one of the chief
elements of good luck, was wanting. He did not appear to be able to
sit still in the canoe. The mosquitoes troubled him terribly. He
was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take plenty of the
largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry. He even went so far
as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I did
formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose.
He was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous
resolve held firm.

There was one place in particular that required very cautious
angling. It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du
Milieu--an open space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet
wide, in the midst of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by
clear, shallow water. Here the great trout assembled at certain
hours of the day; but it was not easy to get them. You must come up
delicately in the canoe, and make fast to a stake at the side of the
pool, and wait a long time for the place to get quiet and the fish
to recover from their fright and come out from under the lily-pads.
It had been our custom to calm and soothe this expectant interval
with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to meditation and a foe of
"Raw haste, half-sister to delay." But this year Patrick could not
endure the waiting. After five minutes he would say:

"BUT the fishing is bad this season! There are none of the big ones
here at all. Let us try another place. It will go better at the
Riviere du Cheval, perhaps."