ne of his hands to the rod while his captive could
use every fin.

Down stream floated Jack, passing the rod back through his hands until
he could grasp the line, and all the while the fish was darting madly
about to get away.

"There, I've touched bottom. Now for him! Here he comes. I'll draw
him ashore easy--that's it! Hurrah! biggest fish ever was caught in
the Cocahutchie!"

That might or might not be so, but Jack Ogden had a three-pound trout,
flopping angrily upon the grass at his feet.

"I know how to do it now," he almost shouted. "I can catch 'em! I
won't let anybody else know how it's done, either."

He had learned something, no doubt, but he had not learned how to make
a large fish out of a small one. All the rest of that afternoon he
caught grasshoppers and cast them daintily into what seemed to be good
places, but he did not have another occasion to tumble in. When at
last he was tired out and decided to go home, he had a dozen more of
trout, not one of them weighing over six ounces, with a pair of very
good yellow perch, one very large perch, a sucker, and three bullheads,
that bit when his bait happened to sink to the bottom without any lead
to help it. Take it all in all, it was a great string of fish to be
caught on a Saturday afternoon, when all that the Crofield sportsmen
around the mill-pond could show was six bullheads, a dozen small perch,
a lot of "pumpkin-seeds" not much larger than dollars, five small eels,
and a very vicious snapping-turtle.

Jack stood for a moment looking down at the results of his experiment
in fly-fishing. He felt, really, as if he could not more than half
believe it.

"Fishing doesn't pay," he said. "It doesn't pay cash, any way. There
isn't anything around Crofield that does pay. Well, it must be time
for me to go home."

CHAPTER III.

I AM ONLY A GIRL.

Jack was dry enough, but anybody could see that he had had a ducking,
when he marched down the main street. He was carrying his prizes in
two strings, one in each hand, and he was looking and feeling taller
than he ever felt before. It was just the right hour to meet people,
and he had to answer curious questions from some women, and from twice
as many men, and from three times as many boys, all the way from above
the green, where he came out into the street, down to the front of the
Washington Hotel.

"Yes; I caught 'em all in the Cocahutchie."

He had had to say that any number of t