the books call it
'whipping the water.' See! Cane, be Jasus! It's the Jim-dandiest little
fishing rod anybody in these parts iver set eyes on. Lord! What a
beauty!"

He turned to Dannie and shook the shining, slender thing before his
envious eyes.

"Who gets the Black Bass now?" he triumphed in tones of utter
conviction.

There is no use in taking time to explain to any fisherman who has read
thus far that Dannie, the patient; Dannie, the long-suffering, felt
abused. How would you feel yourself?

"The Thread Man might have sent twa," was his thought. "The only decent
treatment he got that nicht was frae me, and if I'd let Jimmy hit him,
he'd gone through the wall. But there never is anything fra me!"

And that was true. There never was.

Aloud he said, "Dinna bother to hunt the steelyards, Mary. We winna
weigh it until he brings it home."

"Yes, and by gum, I'll bring it with this! Look, here is a picture of a
man in a boat, pullin' in a whale with a pole just like this," bragged
Jimmy.

"Yes," said Dannie. "That's what it's made for. A boat and open water.
If ye are going to fish wi' that thing along the river we'll have to
cut doon all the trees, and that will dry up the water. That's na for
river fishing."

Jimmy was intently studying the book. Mary tried to take the rod from
his hand.

"Let be!" he cried, hanging on. "You'll break it!"

"I guess steel don't break so easy," she said aggrievedly. "I just
wanted to 'heft' it."

"Light as a feather," boasted Jimmy. "Fish all day and it won't tire a
man at all. Done--unjoint it and put it in its case, and not go
dragging up everything along the bank like a living stump-puller. This
book says this line will bear twinty pounds pressure, and sometimes
it's takin' an hour to tire out a fish, if it's a fighter. I bet you
the Black Bass is a fighter, from what we know of him."

"Ye can watch me land him and see what ye think about it," suggested
Dannie.

Jimmy held the book with one hand and lightly waved the rod with the
other, in a way that would have developed nerves in an Indian. He
laughed absently.

"With me shootin' bait all over his pool with this?" he asked. "I guess
not!"

"But you can't fish for the Bass with that, Jimmy Malone," cried Mary
hotly. "You agreed to fish fair for the Bass, and it wouldn't be fair
for you to use that, whin Dannie only has his old cane pole. Dannie,
get you a steel pole, too," she begged.

"If Jimmy is going to f