tors, Brown Hackles and the like, and dreaming a long, long dream.

Now, I confess there is something about a book of trout flies, even at
the year's end, when all the brooks are flint and gorged with white,
when all the north country hides under seamless raiment that stretches
even to the Pole itself--even at such a time, I say, there is something
about those bits of gimp, and gut, and feathers, and steel, that prick
up the red blood of any man--or of any woman, for that matter--who has
ever flung one of those gaudy things into a swirl of dark water, and
felt the swift, savage tug on the line and heard the music of the
singing reel.

I forgot that I was writing letters and went over there.

"Tell me about it, Eddie," I said. "Where are you going, this time?"

Then he unfolded to me a marvelous plan. It was a place in Nova
Scotia--he had been there once before, only, this time he was going a
different route, farther into the wilderness, the deep unknown,
somewhere even the guides had never been. Perhaps stray logmen had been
there, or the Indians; sportsmen never. There had been no complete
surveys, even by the government. Certain rivers were known by their
outlets, certain lakes by name. It was likely that they formed the usual
network and that the circuit could be made by water, with occasional
carries. Unquestionably the waters swarmed with trout. A certain
imaginative Indian, supposed to have penetrated the unknown, had
declared that at one place were trout the size of one's leg.

Eddie became excited as he talked and his hair bristled. He set down a
list of the waters so far as known, the names of certain guides, a
number of articles of provision and an array of camp paraphernalia.
Finally he made maps and other drawings and began to add figures. It was
dusk when we got back. The lights were winking along the park over the
way, and somewhere through the night, across a waste of cold, lay the
land we had visited, still waiting to be explored. We wandered out into
the dining room and settled the matter across a table. When we rose from
it, I was pledged--pledged for June; and this was still December, the
tail of the old year.

Chapter Two

_And let us buy for the days of spring,_
_While yet the north winds blow!_
_For half the joy of the trip, my boy,_
_Is getting your traps to go._

Chapter Two

Immediately we, that is to say, Eddie, began to buy things. It is
Eddie's way to r