amazing to see how quickly these woodsmen can make a camp. Each
one knew precisely his share of the enterprise. One sprang to chop a dry
spruce log into fuel for a quick fire, and fell a harder tree to keep us
warm through the night. Another stripped a pile of boughs from a balsam
for the beds. Another cut the tent-poles from a neighbouring thicket.
Another unrolled the bundles and made ready the cooking utensils. As if
by magic, the miracle of the camp was accomplished.--

"The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit"--

but Greygown always insists upon completing that quotation from
Stevenson in her own voice; for this is the way it ends,--

"When we put up, my ass and I,
At God's green caravanserai."

Our permanent camp was another day's voyage down the lake, on a beach
opposite the Point Ausable. There the water was contracted to a narrow
strait, and in the swift current, close to the point, the great trout
had fixed their spawning-bed from time immemorial. It was the first week
in September, and the magnates of the lake were already assembling--the
Common Councilmen and the Mayor and the whole Committee of Seventy.
There were giants in that place, rolling lazily about, and chasing each
other on the surface of the water. "Look, M'sieu'!" cried Francois, in
excitement, as we lay at anchor in the gray morning twilight; "one like
a horse has just leaped behind us; I assure you, big like a horse!"

But the fish were shy and dour. Old Castonnier, the guardian of the
lake, lived in his hut on the shore, and flogged the water, early and
late, every day with his home-made flies. He was anchored in his dugout
close beside us, and grinned with delight as he saw his over-educated
trout refuse my best casts. "They are here, M'sieu', for you can see
them," he said, by way of discouragement, "but it is difficult to take
them. Do you not find it so?"

In the back of my fly-book I discovered a tiny phantom minnow--a dainty
affair of varnished silk, as light as a feather--and quietly attached it
to the leader in place of the tail-fly. Then the fun began.

One after another the big fish dashed at that deception, and we played
and netted them, until our score was thirteen, weighing altogether
thirty-five pounds, and the largest five pounds and a half. The guardian
was mystified and disgusted. He looked on for a while in silence, and
then pulled up anchor and clattered ashore. He mu