accouterments of former expeditions of
whatever sort, all that he had bought for this one, all that I had
shipped from week to week, were gathered there. There were wading boots
and camp boots and moccasins and Dutch bed-slippers and shoepacks--the
last-named a sort of Micmac Indian cross between a shoe and a moccasin,
much affected by guides, who keep them saturated with oil and wear them
in the water and out--there were nets of various sizes and sorts, from
large minnow nets through a line of landing nets to some silk head nets,
invented and made by Eddie himself, one for each of us, to pull on day
or night when the insect pests were bad. There was a quantity of
self-prepared ointment, too, for the same purpose, while of sovereign
remedies, balms and anodynes for ills and misfortunes, Eddie's
collection was as the sands of the sea. Soothing lotions there were for
wounds new and old; easing draughts for pains internal and external;
magic salves such as were used by the knights of old romance, Amadis de
Gaul and others, for the instant cure of ghastly lacerations made by man
or beast, and a large fresh bottle of a collodion preparation with
which the victim could be painted locally or in general, and stand forth
at last, good as new--restored, body, bones and skin. In addition there
was a certain bottle of the fluid extract of gelsemium, or something
like that, which was recommended for anything that the rest of the
assortment could do, combined. It was said to be good for everything
from a sore throat to a snake bite--the list of its benefits being
recorded in a text-book by which Eddie set great store.

"Take it, by all means, Eddie," I said, "then you won't need any of the
others."

That settled it. The gelsemium was left behind.

I was interested in Eddie's rods, leaning here and there on various
parcels about the room. I found that the new noibwood, such as I had
ordered, was only a unit in a very respectable aggregate--rather an
unimportant unit it appeared by this time, for Eddie calmly assured me
that the tip had remained set after landing a rather small trout in a
nearby stream and that he did not consider the wood altogether suitable
for trout rods. Whereupon I was moved to confess the little bamboo stick
I had bought in Boston, and produced it for inspection. I could see that
Eddie bristled a bit as I uncased it and I think viewed it and wiggled
it with rather small respect. Still, he did not condemn it utt