ties at home, dozens of them a foot
long, each moving lazily a little, their black backs relieved by their
colored fins. They must have seen us, but at first they showed no desire
for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis and the white miller and the
brown hackle and the gray fly they were alike indifferent. Perhaps the
love for made flies is an artificial taste and has to be cultivated.
These at any rate were uncivilized-trout, and it was only when we
took the advice of the young McGregor and baited our hooks with the
angleworm, that the fish joined in our day's sport. They could not
resist the lively wiggle of the worm before their very noses, and we
lifted them out one after an other, gently, and very much as if we were
hooking them out of a barrel, until we had a handsome string. It may
have been fun for them but it was not much sport for us. All the small
ones the young McGregor contemptuously threw back into the water. The
sportsman will perhaps learn from this incident that there are plenty
of trout in Cape Breton in August, but that the fishing is not
exhilarating.

The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into the
bay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf;
and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and the
peaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the loveliness of
this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuous person on
the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary height was made
more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and his very short
pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a little difficulty in keeping
his balance, and his hat was set upon the back of his head to preserve
his equilibrium. He had arrived at that stage when people affected as
he was are oratorical, and overflowing with information and good-nature.
With what might in strict art be called an excess of expletives, he
explained that he was a civil engineer, that he had lost his rubber
coat, that he was a great traveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to
find a humorous satisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity
with Painsec junction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his
mind as a joke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that
light. From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then,
to the relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore. When the boat
drew away on her voyage we left hi