e smoke curling up among the dark branches toward the stars, and
remembering the afternoon's sport and all the other afternoons and
mornings and nights still to come, I was moved with a deep sense of
gratitude in my heart toward Eddie.

"Eddie," I murmured, "I forgive you all those lists, and everything,
even your hair. I begin to understand now something of how you feel
about the woods and the water, and all. Next time----"

Then (for it was the proper moment) I confessed fully--the purchasing
agent, the tin whistle, even the Jock Scott with two hooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The ordinary New York and New England "half pound trout" will weigh
anywhere from four to six ounces. It takes a trout nearly a foot long to
weigh half a pound. With each additional inch the weight increases
rapidly. A trout thirteen inches in length will weigh about three
quarters of a pound. A fourteen-inch trout will weigh a pound. A
fifteen-inch trout, in good condition, will weigh one and a half pounds,
plump.

Chapter Six

_Nearer the fire the shadows creep--_
_The brands burn dim and red--_
_While the pillow of sleep lies soft and deep_
_Under a weary head._

Chapter Six

When one has been accustomed to the comforts of civilized life--the
small ones, I mean, for they are the only ones that count--the beginning
of a wild, free life near to nature's heart begets a series of
impressions quite new, and strange--so strange. It is not that one
misses a house of solid walls and roof, with stairways and steam
radiators. These are the larger comforts and are more than made up for
by the sheltering temple of the trees, the blazing campfire and the
stairway leading to the stars. But there are things that one does
miss--a little--just at first. When we had finished our first evening's
smoke and the campfire was burning low--when there was nothing further
to do but go to bed, I suddenly realized that the man who said he would
be willing to do without all the rest of a house if he could keep the
bathroom, spoke as one with an inspired knowledge of human needs.

I would not suggest that I am a person given to luxurious habits and
vain details in the matter of evening toilet. But there are so many
things one is in the habit of doing just about bedtime, which in a
bathroom, with its varied small conveniences, seem nothing at all, yet
which assume undue proportions in the deep, dim heart of nature where
only the large primit