o in.

"Not till I 've landed this trout," said Cornelia.

"What? A trout! Have you got one?"

"Certainly; I 've had him on for at least fifteen minutes. I 'm playing
him Mr. Parsons' way. You might as well light the lantern and get the
net ready; he's coming in towards the boat now."

Beekman broke three matches before he made the lantern burn; and when he
held it up over the gunwale, there was the trout sure enough, gleaming
ghostly pale in the dark water, close to the boat, and quite tired out.
He slipped the net over the fish and drew it in,--a monster.

"I 'll carry that trout, if you please," said Cornelia, as they stepped
out of the boat; and she walked into the camp, on the last stroke
of midnight, with the fish in her hand, and quietly asked for the
steelyard.

Eight pounds and fourteen ounces,--that was the weight. Everybody was
amazed. It was the "best fish" of the year. Cornelia showed no sign of
exultation, until just as John was carrying the trout to the ice-house.
Then she flashed out:--"Quite a fair imitation, Mr. McTurk,--is n't it?"

Now McTurk's best record for the last fifteen years was seven pounds and
twelve ounces.

So far as McTurk is concerned, this is the end of the story. But not for
the De Peysters. I wish it were. Beekman went to sleep that night with
a contented spirit. He felt that his experiment in education had been a
success. He had made his wife an angler.

He had indeed, and to an extent which he little suspected. That Upper
Dam trout was to her like the first taste of blood to the tiger. It
seemed to change, at once, not so much her character as the direction
of her vital energy. She yielded to the lunacy of angling, not by slow
degrees, (as first a transient delusion, then a fixed idea, then a
chronic infirmity, finally a mild insanity,) but by a sudden plunge into
the most violent mania. So far from being ready to die at Upper Dam,
her desire now was to live there--and to live solely for the sake of
fishing--as long as the season was open.

There were two hundred and forty hours left to midnight on the thirtieth
of September. At least two hundred of these she spent on the pool; and
when Beekman was too exhausted to manage the boat and the net and the
lantern for her, she engaged a trustworthy guide to take Beekman's place
while he slept. At the end of the last day her score was twenty-three,
with an average of five pounds and a quarter. His score was nine, with
an avera