e canoes and slipped away past an island or
two, among the strewn bowlders at the stream's mouth, pausing to cast a
little here and there, though at first with no other result than to get
our lines in a mess together.

"Now, say, old man," Eddie began, as my line made a turn around his neck
and a half-dozen twists around his tackle, the whole dropping in a heap
in the water, "you mustn't cast like that. You should use the treetop
cast--straight up in the air, when there's a man behind you. Don't you
know you might lacerate a fellow's ear, or put a hook through his lip,
or his nose, or something?"

I said that I was sorry, and that if he would give me a few points on
the treetop cast, and then avoid sitting in the treetops as much as
possible himself I thought there would be no further danger.

He was not altogether pacified. The lines were in a bad tangle and he
said it was wasting precious time to be fooling that way. Clearly two
men could not fish from one canoe and preserve their friendship, and
after our lines were duly parted and Eddie had scolded me sufficiently,
we went ashore just below where the swift current tumbles in, and made
our way to the wide, deep, rock-bound pools above. The going was pretty
thick and scratchy, and one had to move deliberately.

Eddie had more things to carry than I did, for he had brought his gun
and his long-handled net, and these, with his rod, set up and properly
geared with a long leader and two flies, worried him a good deal. The
net had a way of getting hung on twigs. The line and leader displayed a
genius for twisting around small but tough branches and vines, the hooks
caught in unexpected places, and the gun was possessed to get between
his legs. When I had time to consider him, he was swearing steadily and
I think still blaming me for most of his troubles, though the saints
know I was innocent enough and not without difficulties of my own.
Chiefly, I was trying to avoid poison ivy, which is my bane and seemed
plentiful in this particular neck of the woods.

We were out at last, and the wide, dark pool, enclosed by great black
bowlders and sloping slabs of stone, seemed as if it might repay our
efforts. Not for years, maybe, had an artificial fly been cast in that
water. Perhaps Eddie was still annoyed with me, for he pushed farther up
to other pools, and was presently lost to view.

I was not sorry of this, for it may be remembered that I had thus far
never caught a tr