ed them back, and their boat lay upon its
oars. Spalding kept on throwing his fly and trailing the trout to me
to secure with the landing-net."

"Hallo!" shouted Smith, "hold on there; fair play, my friends, give me
a hand in," and he fell to adjusting his rod and flies.

"Keep back, you lubber," replied Spalding; "what do _you_ know about
trout-fishing? You'll frighten them all away by your awkwardness."

"No you don't!" shouted Smith, his rod now adjusted. "Drop down,
boatman, and we'll see who is the lubber. Wait, Spalding! Don't throw,
if you are a true man, until we can take a fair start, and then the
one that comes out second best pays the piper."

The boat dropped down to the proper position, and the Doctor, who was
seated in the stern, held it in place by pressing his paddle into the
sand at the bottom, while the boatman handled the landing net.

"Now!" exclaimed Smith, as the flies dropped upon the water together
above the cold spring. There was no lack of trout, for one rose to the
fly at every cast.

"I say," said the Doctor, "how many have you in your boat?"

"Sixteen," I replied, after counting them.

"We've got eight, and I bar any more fishing. The law has reached its
limit. No wanton waste of the good things of God, you know."

The rods were unjointed and laid away, and such a string of trout as
we had, is rarely seen outside of the Saranac woods. We procured fresh
grass in which to lay our fish, and green boughs to cover them, and
floated on down the stream, entering the Rackett at nine o'clock. The
Rackett is a most beautiful river. To me at least it is so, for it
flows on its tortuous and winding way for a hundred or more miles
through an unbroken forest, with all the old things standing in their
primeval grandeur along its banks. The woodman's axe has not marred
the loveliness of its surroundings, and no human hand has for all that
distance been laid upon its mane, or harnessed it to the great wheel,
making it a slave, compelling it to be utilitarian, to grind corn or
throw the shuttle and spin. It moves on towards the mighty St.
Lawrence as wild, and halterless, and free, as when the Great Spirit
sent it forward on its everlasting flow. The same scenery, and the
same voices are seen and heard along its banks now as then; and, while
man, in his restlessness, has changed almost everything else, the
Rackett and the things that pertained to it when the earth was young,
remain unchanged. But th