really there--hidden away in that quiet unvisited
place, when no one is there to see it, and to hear it sing and
whisper--if anything is anywhere, unless some one is there to see and
hear. But these are deep waters. I am prone to stumble, as we have
seen, and somehow my tallest waders never take me through.

I have already said, and repeated, I think, that there is no better
trout fishing than in the Shelburne. The fish now were not quite so
heavy as they had been higher up, but they were very many. The last half
of the miracle of the loaves and fishes would not have been necessary
here had the multitudes been given some tackle and a few cans of bait.
When we were a little above Kempton Dam, Del pointed out the first place
familiar to him. The woods were precisely the same--the waters just as
fair and fruitful--the locality just as wild; but somehow as we rounded
that bend a certain breath of charm vanished. The spell of perfect
isolation was gone. I had the feeling that we had emerged from the
enchanted borders of No Man's Land--that we were entering a land of real
places, with the haunts and habitations of men.

Kempton Dam itself had been used to catch logs, not so long ago, and
Eddie had visited it on a previous occasion. He still had a fond memory
of a very large trout--opinions differed a trifle as to its exact
size--which he had taken there in a certain pool of golden water, and it
was evident from his talk that he expected to take that trout again, or
some member of its family, or its ghost, maybe, immediately upon
arrival.

It certainly proved an attractive place, and there were any number of
fish. They were not especially large, however. Even the golden water was
fruitful only as to numbers. We waded among the rocks or stood on the
logs, and cast and reeled and netted and returned fish to the water
until we were fairly surfeited. By that time the guides had the camp
ready, and as it was still early we gave them the rods and watched the
sport.

Now a fly-casting tournament at home is a tame entertainment when one
has watched the fishing of Nova Scotia guides. To see a professional
send a fly sailing out a hundred feet or so in Madison Square Garden is
well enough, and it is a meritorious achievement, no doubt, but there is
no return except the record and the applause. To see Del the Stout and
Charles the Strong doing the same thing from that old log dam was a
poem, a picture, an inspiration. Above and belo