and then, to surmise
what was going on beneath his hat, deeply-set eyes and a wrinkled
forehead, relieved at long intervals by a solid shake, proved that there
are meditations deeper than those of philosopher or statesman.

CHAPTER III.

Surely no trout could have been misled by the artificial May-fly of that
time, unless he were either a very young fish, quite new to entomology,
or else one afflicted with a combination of myopy and bulimy. Even now
there is room for plenty of improvement in our counterfeit presentment;
but in those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red
silk and gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike
perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably
consign him--even if his great stamina should over-get the horror--to
an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. On the other
hand, while the May-fly lasted, a trout so cultured, so highly refined,
so full of light and sweetness, would never demean himself to low bait,
or any coarse son of a maggot.

Meanwhile Alec Bolt allowed poor Pike no peaceful thought, no calm
absorption of high mind into the world of flies, no placid period of
cobblers' wax, floss-silk, turned hackles, and dubbing. For in making of
flies John Pike had his special moments of inspiration, times of clearer
insight into the everlasting verities, times of brighter conception and
more subtle execution, tails of more elastic grace and heads of a
neater and nattier expression. As a poet labours at one immortal line,
compressing worlds of wisdom into the music of ten syllables, so toiled
the patient Pike about the fabric of a fly comprising all the excellence
that ever sprang from maggot. Yet Bolt rejoiced to jerk his elbow at the
moment of sublimest art. And a swarm of flies was blighted thus.

Peaceful, therefore, and long-suffering, and full of resignation as he
was, John Pike came slowly to the sad perception that arts avail not
without arms. The elbow, so often jerked, at last took a voluntary jerk
from the shoulder, and Alec Bolt lay prostrate, with his right eye full
of cobbler's wax. This put a desirable check upon his energies for a
week or more, and by that time Pike had flown his fly.

When the honeymoon of spring and summer (which they are now too
fashionable to celebrate in this country), the hey-day of the whole year
marked by the budding of the wild rose, the start of the wheatear from
its s