my nerves, for I was ready then, but failed to take the fly, and so to
get his weight and beauty in these pages. As my luck failed me at the
last, I will place my loss at the full extent of the law, and claim
that nothing less than a ten-pounder was spirited away from my hand
that day. I might not have saved him, netless as I was upon my cumbrous
raft; but I should at least have had the glory of the fight, and the
consolation of the fairly vanquished.

These trout are not properly lake trout, but the common brook trout.
The largest ones are taken with live bait through the ice in winter.
The Indians and the _habitans_ bring them out of the woods from here
and from Snow Lake, on their toboggans, from two and a half to three
feet long. They have kinks and ways of their own. About half a mile
above camp we discovered a deep oval bay to one side of the main
current of the river, that evidently abounded in big fish. Here they
disported themselves. It was a favorite feeding-ground, and late every
afternoon the fish rose all about it, making those big ripples the
angler delights to see. A trout, when he comes to the surface, starts a
ring about his own length in diameter; most of the rings in the pool,
when the eye caught them, were like barrel hoops, but the haughty trout
ignored all our best efforts; not one rise did we get. We were told of
this pool on our return to Quebec, and that other anglers had a similar
experience there. But occasionally some old fisherman, like a great
advocate who loves a difficult case, would set his wits to work and
bring into camp an enormous trout taken there.

I had been told in Quebec that I would not see a bird in the woods, not
a feather of any kind. But I knew I should, though they were not
numerous. I saw and heard a bird nearly every day, on the tops of the
trees about, that I think was one of the crossbills. The kingfisher was