happy, and at the sight of the piece of silver an expression
of interest came over the face of the father. "Wait a minute," said he,
and he went into a little room that seemed to be a kitchen. Returning,
he brought with him a small string of trout. "Do you want to buy some
fish?" he said. "These is nice fresh ones. I ketched 'em this mornin'."

To offer to sell fish to a man who is just about to go out to catch them
for himself might, in most cases, be considered an insult, but it was
quite evident that nothing of the kind was intended by Barney. He
probably thought that if I bought grasshoppers, I might buy fish. "You
kin have 'em for a quarter," he said.

It was derogatory to my pride to buy fish at such a moment, but the man
looked very poor, and there was a shade of anxiety on his face which
touched me. Old Peter stood by without saying a word. "It might be
well," I said, turning to him, "to buy these fish, for we may not catch
enough for supper."

"Such things do happen," said the old man.

"Well," said I, "if we have these we shall feel safe in any case." And I
took the fish and gave the man a quarter. It was not, perhaps, a
professional act, but the trout were well worth the money, and I felt
that I was doing a deed of charity.

Old Peter and I now took our rods, and crossed the road into an enclosed
field, and thence into a wide stretch of grass land, bounded by hills
in front of us and to the right, while a thick forest lay to the left.
We had walked but a short distance, when Peter said: "I'll go down into
the woods, and try my luck there, and you'd better go along up stream,
about a quarter of a mile, to where it's rocky. P'raps you ain't used to
fishin' in the woods, and you might git your line cotched. You'll find
the trout'll bite in the rough water."

"Where is the stream?" I asked.

"This is it," he said, pointing to a little brook, which was scarcely
too wide for me to step across, "and there's fish right here, but
they're hard to ketch, fur they git plenty of good livin' and are mighty
sassy about their eatin'. But you kin ketch 'em up there."

Old Peter now went down toward the woods, while I walked up the little
stream. I had seen trout-brooks before, but never one so diminutive as
this. However, when I came nearer to the point where the stream issued
from between two of the foot-hills of the mountains, which lifted their
forest-covered heights in the distance, I found it wider and shallower