ert, with overweening
confidence and considerable excitement, that it was a tremendously big
one. Experience had, during all his piscatorial career, contradicted
him ninety-nine times out of every hundred; but Frank's firm belief in
his last minnow being a big trout--at least until it lay gasping on the
bank at his feet--was as unshaken after long years of mistaken
calculation as when first he sallied forth to the babbling brook with a
willow branch, a fathom of twine, and a crooked pin!

Such untiring devotion, of course, could not fail to make Frank
particularly knowing in all the details and minutiae of his much-loved
sport. He knew every hole and corner of the rivers and burns within
fifteen miles of his father's house. He became mysteriously wise in
regard to the weather; knew precisely the best fly for any given day,
and, in the event of being unhappily destitute of the proper kind, could
dress one to perfection in ten minutes. As he grew older and taller,
and the muscles on his large and well-made limbs began to develop, Frank
slung a more capacious basket on his back, shouldered a heavier rod,
and, with a pair of thick shoes and a home-spun shooting suit, stretched
away over the Highland hills towards the romantic shores of the west
coast of Scotland. Here he first experienced the wild excitement of
salmon-fishing; and here the Waltonian chains, that had been twining and
thickening around him from infancy, received two or three additional
coils, and were finally riveted for ever. During his sojourn in
America, he had happened to dwell in places where the fishing, though
good, was not of a very exciting nature; and he had not seen a salmon
since the day he left home, so that it is not matter for wonder that his
stride was rapid and his eye bright while he hurried towards the pool,
as before mentioned.

He who has never left the beaten tracks of men, or trod the unknown
wilderness, can have but a faint conception of the feelings of a true
angler as he stands by the brink of a dark pool which has hitherto
reflected only the antlers of the wild deer--whose dimpling eddies and
flecks of foam have been disturbed by no fisher since the world began,
except the polar bear. Besides the pleasurable emotions of strong hope,
there is the additional charm of uncertainty as to what will rise, and
of certainty that if there be anything piscatine beneath these
fascinating ripples it undoubtedly _will_ rise--and bite too!