The tenants of the lake were far-famed for both their quantities and
their quality, and the ice had hardly disappeared before numberless
little boats were launched from the shores, and the lines of the
fishermen were dropped into the inmost recesses of its deepest
caverns, tempting the unwary animals with every variety of bait that
the ingenuity or the art of man had invented. But the slow though
certain adventures with hook and line were ill suited to the profusion
and impatience of the settlers. More destructive means were resorted
to; and, as the season had now arrived when the bass fisheries were
allowed by the provisions of the law that Judge Temple had procured,
the sheriff declared his intention, by availing himself of the first
dark night, to enjoy the sport in person.

“And you shall be present, Cousin Bess,” he added, when he announced
this design, “and Miss Grant, and Mr. Edwards; and I will show you
what I call fishing not nibble, nibble, nibble, as ‘Duke does when he
goes after the salmon-trout. There he will sit for hours, in a
broiling sun or, perhaps, over a hole in the lee, in the coldest days
in winter, under the lee of a few bushes, and not a fish will he
catch, after all this mortification of the flesh. No, no—give me a
good seine that’s fifty or sixty fathoms in length, with a jolly
parcel of boatmen to crack their jokes the while, with Benjamin to
steer, and let us haul them in by thousands; I call that fishing.”

“Ah! Dickon,” cried Marmaduke, “thou knowest but little of the
pleasure there is in playing with the hook and line, or thou wouldst
be more saving of the game. I have known thee to leave fragments
enough behind thee, when thou hast headed a night party on the lake,
to feed a dozen famishing families.”