For some little time the colonel sat before the glasses, in which the
cracked ice was rapidly melting. He, too, made little rings of water
on the table.

"I wonder--" he mused, "I wonder if I did right."

His hand sought his pocket, and came out empty.

"I guess I must have left it on the bed," he murmured. "But I can
remember it."

Then, as though reading from the little green book, he recited:

"But if the old salmon gets to the sea . . . and he recovers his
strength, and comes next summer to the same river, if it be
possible. . ."

"Spotty is a veritable salmon," mused the colonel, "even if he is
speckled like a trout. I wonder, if he gets into the sea of New York,
if I'll ever be able to land him?

"Well, he gave me my life, and I just _had_ to give him a chance for
his. It was all I could do. Now to fish and forget everything!"

It was a fair morning in April, with the sun just right, with the "wind
in the west when the fish bite best," and Colonel Robert Lee Ashley,
with the faithful Shag to carry his rods, creel and a lunch basket,
sallied forth from his hotel for a day beside a no-very-distant stream,
the virtues of which he had heard were most alluring as regarded trout.