nd surrounded on every side by clear, shallow water.
Here the great trout assembled at certain hours of the day; but it was
not easy to get them. You must come up delicately in the canoe, and make
fast to a stake at the side of the pool, and wait a long time for the
place to get quiet and the fish to recover from their fright and come
out from under the lily-pads. It had been our custom to calm and soothe
this expectant interval with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to
meditation and a foe of "Raw haste, half-sister to delay." But this year
Patrick could not endure the waiting. After five minutes he would say:

"BUT the fishing is bad this season! There are none of the big ones here
at all. Let us try another place. It will go better at the Riviere du
Cheval, perhaps."

There was only one thing that would really keep him quiet, and that
was a conversation about Quebec. The glories of that wonderful city
entranced his thoughts. He was already floating, in imagination, with
the vast throngs of people that filled its splendid streets, looking up
at the stately houses and churches with their glittering roofs of tin,
and staring his fill at the magnificent shop-windows, where all the
luxuries of the world were displayed. He had heard that there were more
than a hundred shops--separate shops for all kinds of separate things:
some for groceries, and some for shoes, and some for clothes, and some
for knives and axes, and some for guns, and many shops where they sold
only jewels--gold rings, and diamonds, and forks of pure silver. Was it
not so?

He pictured himself, side by side with his goodwife, in the salle a
manger of the Hotel Richelieu, ordering their dinner from a printed
bill of fare. Side by side they were walking on the Dufferin Terrace,
listening to the music of the military band. Side by side they were
watching the wonders of the play at the Theatre de l'Etoile du Nord.
Side by side they were kneeling before the gorgeous altar in the
cathedral. And then they were standing silent, side by side, in the
asylum of the orphans, looking at brown eyes and blue, at black hair and
yellow curls, at fat legs and rosy cheeks and laughing mouths, while the
Mother Superior showed off the little boys and girls for them to choose.
This affair of the choice was always a delightful difficulty, and here
his fancy loved to hang in suspense, vibrating between rival joys.

Once, at the Riviere du Milieu, after considerable discour