, because it was about the only way in which it
could have been made, and now he was so very nervous and excited and
cautious that he did very well again, aided as before by the breeze.
Not in the same place, but at a little distance down, and close to
where Jack captured his second bait, there was a crook in the
Cocahutchie, with a steep, overhanging, bushy bank. Into the glassy
shadow under that bank the sinkerless line carried and dropped its
little green prisoner, and there was a hungry fellow in there, waiting
for foolish grasshoppers in the meadow to spring too far and come down
upon the water instead of upon the grass. As the grasshopper alighted
on the water, there was a rush, a plunge, a strong hard pull, and then
Jack Ogden said to himself:

"I've heard how they do it. They wait and tire 'em out. I won't be in
too much of a hurry. He'll get away if I am."

That is probably what the fish would have done, for he was a fish with
what army men call "tactics." He was able to pull very hard, and he
was also wise enough to rush in under the bank and to sulkily stay
there.

"Feels as if I'd hooked a snag," said Jack. "May be I've lost the fish
and he's hitched me into a 'cod-lamper' eel of some kind. Steady--no,
I mustn't pull harder than the fish."

He was breathless, but not with any exertion that he was making. His
hat fell off upon the grass, as he leaned forward through the alder
bushes, and his sandy hair was tangled for a moment in some stubby
twigs. He loosened his head, still holding firmly his bent and
straining rod. One step farther, a slip of his left foot, an
unsuccessful grasp at a bush, and then Jack went over and down into a
pool deeper than he had thought the Cocahutchie afforded so near
Crofield.

There was a very fine splash, as the grasshopper fly-fisherman went
under, and there was a coughing and spluttering a moment afterward,
when his eager, excited, anxious face came up again. He could swim
extremely well, and he was not thinking of his ducking--only of his
game.

"I hope I haven't lost him!" he exclaimed, as he tried to pull upon the
line.

It did not tug at all, just then, for the fish on the hook had been
rudely startled out from under the bank and was on his way up the
Cocahutchie, with the hook in his mouth.

"There' he is! I've got him yet! Glad I can swim--" cried Jack; and
it did seem as if he and this fish were very well matched, except that
Jack had to give o