out by casting in open, smooth water, and I was willing
to practice a little alone. I decided to work deliberately, without
haste and excitement, and to get my flies caught in the treetops as
infrequently as possible. I adjusted them now, took a good look behind
and tossed my cast toward the other side of the dark pool. I thought I
did it rather well, too, and I dragged the flies with a twitching
motion, as I had seen Eddie do it, but nothing happened. If there were
trout anywhere in the world, they would be in a pool like this, and if
there was ever an evening for them it was now. It was in the nature of
probability that Eddie would come back with a good string, and I could
not let him find me a confessed failure. So once more I sent the flies
out over the pool--a little farther this time, and twitched them a
little more carefully, but I might have been fishing in a tub, so far as
any tangible fish were concerned.

A little more line and a reckless back cast landed my tail fly in a
limb--a combination which required time and patience to disengage. By
the time I had worked out the puzzle it began to seem like a warm
evening. Then I snapped the flies into several different corners of the
pool, got hung again on the same limb, jerked and broke the fly and
repeated some of the words I had learned from Eddie as we came through
the brush.

I was cooler after that, and decided to put on a new and different fly.
I thought a Jenny Lind would be about the thing, and pretty soon was
slapping it about--at first hopefully, then rashly. Then in mere
desperation I changed the top fly and put on a Montreal. Of course I
wouldn't catch anything. I never would catch anything, except by
trolling, as any other duffer, or even a baby might, but I would have
fun with the flies, anyway. So the Montreal went capering out over the
pool, landing somewhere amid the rocks on the other side. And then all
at once I had my hands full of business, for there was a leap and a
splash, and a z-z-z-t of the reel, and a second later my rod was curved
like a buggy whip, the line as taut as wire and weaving and swaying from
side to side with a live, heavy body, the body of a trout--a real
trout--hooked by me with a fly, cast on a quiet pool.

I wouldn't have lost that fish for money. But I was deadly afraid of
doing so. A good thing for me, then, my practice in landing, of the
evening before. "Easy, now--easy," I said to myself, just as Del had
done. "If y