glected. "Shake the bait easy,
and kind o' bob it up and down; and if you get a bite don't yank very
hard, just a little pull, and then swing him out on to the bank."

His words were hardly out, before I felt a vigorous tug at my hook, and
quite forgetful of advice, gave a tremendous jerk and flung a half pound
trout clean over our heads and into the hazel bushes!

"Gracious! you've scared every fish in this hole!" exclaimed Tom. "But
that's a good trout. Pick him up and string him. I guess I'll go up
stream now, and you fish on down stream. When we each get a dozen, we
will go to the camp; but don't stay too long, anyway."

Tom was a little disgusted, I suppose, with the way I yanked out that
trout, and thought that I had better fish by myself. He went off up the
brook. I determined to catch a dozen as quickly as he did. So I strung
my half-pound fish on a hazel twig, and scud along to the next bend of
the brook. I had no more than looked to my bait and dropped in there,
when I had a bite and (this time more carefully) swung out a thumping
big trout that would have weighed near a pound! His sides were well
specked with red; he was a beauty!

Taking him off the hook, after some trouble with him in a bunch of
brush, I strung him, dropped in again, and had a third one
out--smaller--in less than half a minute. The brook was plainly well
stocked with trout. Baiting again, I tossed in and caught a fourth in
less time than it had taken me to cut off the scred of pork. I got a
fifth and a sixth, both good-sized, and had my seventh bite, when,
jerking, I lost him, and the hook, catching on a dry pine branch which
stuck out from a pile of drift, was broken. It was the only one I had,
and I stamped the ground with vexation. Tom would beat me now; and as it
would do no good to linger after the hook was gone, I took my string of
half a dozen--weighing fully three pounds--and went back to camp as fast
as I could, in order to show good time on the half dozen.

I was in a few minutes ahead of Thomas. But he brought a dozen nice
ones, though some of his were smaller than mine. He had one larger than
my largest, however. The eighteen, as we laid them out on the grass,
were a pretty lot to look at, with the sunshine playing on their spotted
sides.

Meantime, I had heard Willis's gun several times, and Tom said that he
had heard it, too. "He's shooting partridges, or else gray squirrels, I
guess," Tom remarked. "Gray squirrels, wher