e antique wedding-bell
slipped away as if by magic.

On the fourth day, June twenty-ninth, Chichester having been assured by
telegraph that all the things from Quebec had been safely shipped on
the _Ste. Irenee_, was spending a morning hour with Ethel in the
pavilion of the Government Fish Station at _Anse a l'Eau_, watching the
great herd of captive salmon, circling round and round in restless
imprisonment in their warm shallow pool. The splendid fish were growing
a little dull and languid in their confined quarters, freshened only by
the inflowing of a small brook, and exposed to the full glare of the
sun. Many of them bore the scars of the nets in which they had been
captured. Others had red wounds on the ends of their noses where they
had butted against the rocks or the timbers of the dam. There were some
hundreds of the fish, and every now and then a huge thirty-pounder
would wallow on top of the water, or a small, lively one would spring
high into the air and fall back with a sounding splash on his side.
Here they must wait through the summer, the pool becoming daily hotter,
more crowded, more uncomfortable, until the time came when the hatchery
men would strip them of their spawn. To an angler the sight was
somewhat disquieting, though he might admit the strength of the
arguments for the artificial propagation of fish. But to Ethel it
seemed a pretty spectacle and a striking contrast to the cruelty of
angling.

"Look at them," she said, "how happy they are, and how safe! No
fly-fishermen to stick a hook in their mouths and make them suffer. How
can you bear to do it?"

"Well," said Chichester, "if it comes to suffering, I doubt whether the
fish are conscious of any such thing, as we understand it. But even if
they are, they suffer twice as much, and a thousand times as long, shut
up in this hot, nasty pool, as they would in being caught in proper
style."

"But think of the hook!"

"Hurts about as much as a pin-prick."

"But think of the fearful struggle, and the long, gasping agony on the
shore."

"There's no fear in the struggle; it's just a trial of strength and
skill, like a game of football. A fish doesn't know anything about
death; so he has no fear of it. And there is no gasping on the shore;
nothing but a quick rap on the head with a stick, and it's all over."

"But why should he be killed at all?"

"Well," said he, smiling, "there are reasons of taste. You eat salmon,
don't you?"

"Ye-e-es,