e in his jaw, made by your hook
at the mouth of the Bog river. I've filed a summons and complaint
against you for assault and battery, and beg to notify you of
the fact.'

"'I plead the general issue,' said I.

"'There's no such thing known to the code,' he replied.

"'I deny the fact, then,' I exclaimed.

"'That won't do,' he rejoined; "'the complaint is put in under oath,
and you must answer by affidavit, of the truth of your denial.'

"You see my dilemma. I remembered the circumstance of hooking a noble
trout at the place alleged, and as the affair has been settled, I'll
tell you how it was. At the head of Tupper's Lake, one of the most
beautiful sheets of water that the sun ever shone upon, lying alone
among the mountains, surrounded by old primeval forests, walled in by
palisadoes of rocks, and studded with islands, the Bog River enters;
this river comes down from the hills away back in the wilderness,
sometimes rushing with a roar over rocks and through gorges, sometimes
plunging down precipices, and sometimes moving with a deep and
sluggish current across a broad sweep of table land. For several miles
back of the lake, and until a few rods of the shore, it is a calm,
deep river. It then rushes down a steep, shelving rock some twenty
feet into a great rocky basin; then down again over a shelving rock in
a fall of twenty feet into another rocky basin; and then again in
another fall of twenty or thirty feet, over a steep, shelving rock,
shooting with a swift current far out into the lake. These falls
constitute a beautiful cascade, and their roar may be heard of a calm,
summer evening, for miles out on the placid water.

"At the foot of these falls, in the summer season, the trout
congregate; beautiful large fellows, from one to three pounds in
weight; and a fly trailed across the current, or over the eddies, just
at its outer edge, is a thing at which they are tolerably sure to
rise. Well, last summer, I was out that way among the lakes that lie
sleeping in beauty, and along the streams that flow through the old
woods, playing the savage and vagabondizing in a promiscuous way. The
river was low, and a broad rock, smooth and bare, sloping gently to
the water's edge, under which the stream whirled as it entered the
lake, and above which tall trees towered, casting over it a pleasant
shade, presented a tempting place to throw the fly. I cast over the
current, and trailed along towards the edge of the rock, when