ion the rapture of that first moment. The jolt carried through
all the intricacies of the nerves, jarred the soul within the man, and
seemingly registered in the germ plasm itself an impression that could
be recalled, in dreams, ten generations hence. Fortunately the pole
withstood that first, frantic rush, and then things began to happen in
earnest.

The great trout seemed to dance on the surface of the water. He tugged,
he swam in frantic circles, he flopped and darted and sulked and rushed
and leaped. If he hadn't been securely hooked, and if it had not been
for a skill earned in a hundred such battles, Ben would not have held
him a moment.

But the time came at last, after a sublime half-hour, when his steam
began to die. His rushes were less powerful, and often he hung like a
dead weight on the line. Slowly Ben worked him in, not daring to believe
that he was conquering, willing to sell his soul for the privilege of
seeing the great fish safe in the boat. His eyes protruded, perspiration
gleamed on his brow, he talked foolishly and incessantly to Ezram, the
fish, the river-gods, and himself. Ezram, something of an old Isaac
Walton himself, managed the canoe with unusual dexterity and chuckled in
the contagion of Ben's delight. And lo--in a moment more the thing was
done.

"You'd think you never had a rod in your hand before," Ezram commented
in mock disgust. "Such hollerin' and whoopin' I never heard."

Ben grinned widely. "That's fishing--the sport that keeps a man an
amateur all his days--with an amateur's delight." His vivid smile
quivered at his lips and was still. "That's why I love the North; it can
never, never grow old. You're just as excited at the close as at the
beginning. Ezram, old man, it's life!"

Ezram nodded. Perhaps, in the moment's fire, Ben had touched at the
truth. Perhaps _life_, in its fullest sense, is something more than
being born, breathing air, consuming food, and moving the lips in
speech. _Life_ is a thing that wilderness creatures know, realized only
when the blood, leaping red, sweeps away lifeless and palsied tissue and
builds a more sentient structure in its place; invoked by such forces as
adventure and danger and battle and triumph. For the past half-hour Ben
had lived in the fullest sense, and Ezram was a little touched by the
look of unspeakable gratitude with which his young companion regarded
him.

But the journey ended at last. They saw the white peak they had been
t