"Shag!" exclaimed the colonel, when they were tramping through a field
near the river, having reached that vantage point by a most prosaic
trolley car, "this is a beautiful day!"

"It suah am, sah!"

"And I'm going to catch some fine fish!"

"I suah does hope so, Colonel!"

"All right then! Now don't say another word until I speak to you.
We'll be there pretty soon, and if there's one thing more than another
that I hate, it's to have some one talking when I'm fishing."

"Yes, sah, Colonel!"

"Um! Well, see that you mind!"

Selecting with care a fly from his numerous collection, and hoping the
appetites of the fish would incline them to consider it favorably that
morning, Colonel Ashley proceeded to make his casts, standing not far
from a bent, gnarled and twisted elm tree, that overhung the bank of
the stream where the current had cut into the soil, making a deep eddy,
in which a lazy trout might choose to lie in wait for some choice
morsel.

Lightly as a falling feather, the fisherman let his fly come to rest on
the sun-lit water, and, hardly had it sent the first, few faint ripples
circling toward shore than there was a shrill song of the reel, and the