own a sharpish run into
that good trout's hole. The worthy trout looked at them both, and
thought; for he had his own favorite spot for watching the world go by,
as the rest of us have. So he let the grizzled palmer pass, within an
inch of his upper lip; for it struck him that the tail turned up in a
manner not wholly natural, or at any rate unwholesome. He looked at the
white moth also, and thought that he had never seen one at all like it.
So he went down under his root again, hugging himself upon his wisdom,
never moving a fin, but oaring and helming his plump, spotted sides
with his tail.

"Upon my word, it is too bad," said Hilary, after three beautiful
throws, and exquisite management down-stream; "everything Kentish beats
me hollow. Now, if that had been one of our trout, I would have laid my
life upon catching him. One more throw, however. How would it be if I
sunk my flies? That fellow is worth some patience."

While he was speaking, his flies alit on the glassy ripple, like gnats
in their love-dance; and then by a turn of the wrist, he played them
just below the surface, and let them go gliding down the stickle, into
the shelfy nook of shadow where the big trout hovered. Under the
surface, floating thus, with the check of ductile influence, the two
flies spread their wings and quivered, like a centiplume moth in a
spider's web. Still the old trout, calmly oaring, looked at them both
suspiciously. Why should the same flies come so often, and why should
they have such crooked tails, and could he be sure that he did not spy
the shadow of a human hat about twelve yards up the water? Revolving
these things, he might have lived to a venerable age but for that noble
ambition to teach, which is fatal to even the wisest. A young fish, an
insolent whipper-snapper, jumped in his babyish way at the palmer, and
missed it through over-eagerness. "I'll show you the way to catch a
fly," said the big trout to him: "open your mouth like this, my son."

With that he bolted the palmer, and threw up his tail, and turned to go
home again. Alas! his sweet home now shall know him no more. For
suddenly he was surprised by a most disagreeable sense of grittiness,
and then a keen stab in the roof of his month. He jumped, in his wrath,
a foot out of the water, and then heavily plunged to the depths of
his hole.

"You've got it, my friend," cried Hilary, in a tingle of fine emotions;
"I hope the sailor's knots are tied with profession