worm-fishing. We were on this very Taylor Brook, and at five in the
afternoon both baskets were two thirds full. By count I had just one
more fish than he. It was raining hard. "You fish down through the
alders," said R. magnanimously. "I 'll cut across and wait for you at
the sawmill. I don't want to get any wetter, on account of my
rheumatism."

This was rather barefaced kindness,--for whose rheumatism was ever the
worse for another hour's fishing? But I weakly accepted it. I coveted
three or four good trout to top off with,--that was all. So I tied on a
couple of flies, and began to fish the alders, wading waist deep in the
rapidly rising water, down the long green tunnel under the curving
boughs. The brook fairly smoked with the rain, by this time, but when
did one fail to get at least three or four trout out of this best half
mile of the lower brook? Yet I had no luck I tried one fly after
another, and then, as a forlorn hope,--though it sometimes has a magic
of its own,--I combined a brown hackle for the tail fly with a twisting
worm on the dropper. Not a rise! I thought of E. sitting patiently in
the saw mill, and I fished more conscientiously than ever.

"Venture as warily, use the same skill,
Do your best, whether winning or losing it,
If you choose to play!--is my principle."

Even those lines, which by some subtle telepathy of the trout brook
murmur themselves over and over to me in the waning hours of an unlucky
day, brought now no consolation. There was simply not one fish to be
had, to any fly in the book, out of that long, drenching, darkening
tunnel. At last I climbed out of the brook, by the bridge. R. was
sitting on the fence, his neck and ears carefully turtled under his