Michaelmas. I'll bet you a crown that I catch him before
the holidays--at least, unless some other fellow does."

CHAPTER II.

The day of that most momentous interview must have been the 14th of May.
Of the year I will not be so sure; for children take more note of days
than of years, for which the latter have their full revenge thereafter.
It must have been the 14th, because the morrow was our holiday, given
upon the 15th of May, in honour of a birthday.

Now, John Pike was beyond his years wary as well as enterprising, calm
as well as ardent, quite as rich in patience as in promptitude and
vigour. But Alec Bolt was a headlong youth, volatile, hot, and hasty,
fit only to fish the Maelstrom, or a torrent of new lava. And the moment
he had laid that wager he expected his crown piece; though time, as the
lawyers phrase it, was "expressly of the essence of the contract."

And now he demanded that Pike should spend the holiday in trying to
catch that trout.

"I shall not go near him," that lad replied, "until I have got a new
collar." No piece of personal adornment was it, without which he would
not act, but rather that which now is called the fly-cast, or the
gut-cast, or the trace, or what it may be. "And another thing,"
continued Pike; "the bet is off if you go near him, either now or at
any other time, without asking: my leave first, and then only going as I
tell you."

"What do I want with the great slimy beggar?" the arrogant Bolt made
answer. "A good rat is worth fifty of him. No fear of my going near him,
Pike. You shan't get out of it that way."

Pike showed his remarkable qualities that day, by fishing exactly as he
would have fished without having heard of the great Crockerite. He was
up and away upon the mill-stream before breakfast; and the forenoon he
devoted to his favourite course--first down the Craddock stream, a very
pretty confluent of the Culm, and from its junction, down the pleasant
hams, where the river winds toward Uffculme. It was my privilege to
accompany this hero, as his humble Sancho; while Bolt and the faster
race went up the river ratting. We were back in time to have Pike's
trout (which ranged between two ounces and one-half pound) fried for the
early dinner; and here it may be lawful to remark that the trout of the
Culm are of the very purest excellence, by reason of the flinty bottom,
at any rate in these the upper regions. For the valley is the western
outlet of the Black-d