"I've got him! How cold he is--how slippery--how pretty! Just like a
piece of rainbow!"

"Do you see the red spots? Did you notice how gamy he was, little
brother; how he played? It is a trout, for sure; a real trout, almost as
long as your hand."

So the two lads tramp along up the stream, chattering as if there
were no rubric of silence in the angler's code. Presently another
simple-minded troutling falls a victim to their unpremeditated art; and
they begin already, being human, to wish for something larger. In the
very last pool that they dare attempt--a dark hole under a steep bank,
where the brook issues from the woods--the boy drags out the hoped-for
prize, a splendid trout, longer than a new lead-pencil. But he feels
sure that there must be another, even larger, in the same place. He
swings his line out carefully over the water, and just as he is about to
drop it in, the little brother, perched on the sloping brink, slips on
the smooth pine-needles, and goes sliddering down into the pool up to
his waist. How he weeps with dismay, and how funnily his dress sticks to
him as he crawls out! But his grief is soon assuaged by the privilege
of carrying the trout strung on an alder twig; and it is a happy, muddy,
proud pair of urchins that climb over the fence out of the field of
triumph at the close of the day.

What does the father say, as he meets them in the road? Is he frowning
or smiling under that big brown beard? You cannot be quite sure. But one
thing is clear: he is as much elated over the capture of the real trout
as any one. He is ready to deal mildly with a little irregularity
for the sake of encouraging pluck and perseverance. Before the three