al
occasion of delay. But if it was poor, he made it an occasion to sit
down to meditate upon the cause of his failure, and tried to overcome it
with many subtly reasoned changes of the fly--which is a vain thing to
do, but well adapted to make one forgetful of the flight of time.

So I waited for him near an hour, and then ate my half of the sandwiches
and boiled eggs, smoked a solitary pipe, and fell into a light sleep at
the foot of the biggest birch tree, an old and trusty friend of mine.
It seemed like a very slight sound that roused me: the snapping of a dry
twig in the thicket, or a gentle splash in the water, differing in some
indefinable way from the steady murmur of the stream; something it was,
I knew not what, that made me aware of some one coming down the brook.
I raised myself quietly on one elbow and looked up through the trees to
the head of the pool. "Ned will think that I have gone down long ago,"
I said to myself; "I will just lie here and watch him fish through this
pool, and see how he manages to spend so much time about it."

But it was not Ned's rod that I saw poking out through the bushes at the
bend in the brook. It was such an affair as I had never seen before upon
a trout stream: a majestic weapon at least sixteen feet long, made in
two pieces, neatly spliced together in the middle, and all painted a
smooth, glistening, hopeful green. The line that hung from the tip of it
was also green, but of a paler, more transparent colour, quite thick and
stiff where it left the rod, but tapering down towards the end, as if it
were twisted of strands of horse-hair, reduced in number, until, at
the hook, there were but two hairs. And the hook--there was no disguise
about that--it was an unabashed bait-hook, and well baited, too. Gently
the line swayed to and fro above the foaming water at the head of the
pool; quietly the bait settled down in the foam and ran with the current
around the edge of the deep eddy under the opposite bank; suddenly the
line straightened and tautened; sharply the tip of the long green rod
sprang upward, and the fisherman stepped out from the bushes to play his
fish.

Where had I seen such a figure before? The dress was strange and
quaint--broad, low shoes, gray woollen stockings, short brown breeches
tied at the knee with ribbons, a loose brown coat belted at the waist
like a Norfolk jacket; a wide, rolling collar with a bit of lace at the
edge, and a soft felt hat with a shady