s gave us the most
charming exhibition of light and delicate fly-casting I have ever
witnessed. It was worth the dollar to watch the way in which he sought
to wheedle and coax and fascinate those trout, and to study the deft
dispatch and grace with which he landed a fish, once hooked. Still he
hadn't learned quite enough. He hadn't learned to take five trout in
fifteen minutes in that particular place and on that particular evening.
Perhaps it was a little late when he began. Perhaps fifteen minutes is a
shorter period than it sometimes seems. Three trout completed his score
at the end of the allotted time--all fairly large.

Yet I must not fail to add here that a few days later, in other water,
both Eddie and his guide made good their wager. Each took his five
trout--small ones--in fifteen minutes, and had time to spare. As I have
remarked once or twice already, one of the most uncertain things in life
to gamble on is fishing.

Chapter Twenty-six

_Oh, the waves they pitch and the waves they toss,_
_And the waves they frighten me;_
_And if ever I get my boat across_
_I'll go no more to sea._

Chapter Twenty-six

We were met by a surprise at our camp. Two men sat there, real men, the
first we had seen since we entered the wilderness. Evidently they were
natives by their look--trappers or prospectors of some sort. They turned
out to be bear hunters, and they looked rather hungrily at the
assortment of fish we had brought in--enough for supper and breakfast.
Perhaps they had not been to fish so frequently as to bear. I believe
they were without tackle, or maybe their luck had been poor--I do not
remember. At all events it developed presently that they needed fish,
also that they had a surplus of butter of a more recent period than the
little dab we had left. They were willing to dicker--a circumstance that
filled us with an enthusiasm which we restrained with difficulty. In
fact, Del did not restrain his quite enough. He promptly offered them
all the fish we had brought in for their extra pound of butter, when we
could just as easily have got it for half the number of fish. Of course
the fish did not seem especially valuable to us, and we were willing
enough to make a meal without them. Still, one can never tell what will
happen, and something like six dollars worth of trout--reckoned by New
York prices--seems an unnecessary sum to pay for a pound of butter,
even in the Nova Scotia woods