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Show A HOLIDAY IN A VACATION we must carry across it. But it shall help while it hinders us. Pry up the creaking sluice-gate<', sending a fresh head of water down the channel along with us, lifting us over the shallows, driving us on through the rocky places, buoyant, alert, and rejoicing, till we come again to a level meadow, an~ the long, calm, indolent reaches of river. Look on the right there, under the bushes. There is a cold, still brook, slipping into the lazy river; and there we must try the truth of the tales we have heard of the plentiful trout of Machias. Let the flies fall light by the mouth of the brook, caressing, inviting. Nothing there? Then push the canoe through the interlaced alders, quietly, slowly up the narrow stream, till a wider pool lies open before you. Now let the rod swing high in the air, lifting the line above the bushes, dropping the flies as far away as you can on the dark-brown water. See how quickly the answer comes, in two swift golden flashes out of the depths of the sleeping pool. This is a pretty brace of trout, from thirty to forty ounces of thoroughbred fighting pluck, and the spirit that will not surrender. If they only knew that their strength would 40 ' A HOLIDAY IN A VACATION be doubled by acting together, they soon would tangle your line in the roots or break your rod in the alders. But all the tim• they are fighting against each other, making it easy to bring them up to the net and land them-a pair of beauties, evenly matched in weight and in splendour, gleaming with rich iridescent hues of orange and green and peacock- blue and crimson. A few feet beyond you find another, a smaller fish, and then one a little larger; and so you go on up the stream, threading the boat through the alders, with patience and infinite caution, carefully casting your flies when the stream opens out to invite them, till you have rounded your dozen of trout and are wisely contented. Then you go backward down the brook-too narrow for turningand join the other canoe that waits, floating leisurely on with the river. There is a change now in the character of the stream. The low hills that have been standing far away, come close together from either side, as if they meant to bar any further passage; and the dreamy river wakes up to wrestle its way down the narrow valley. There are no long, sleepy reaches, no wide, 41 |