LITMIR.BIZ

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the pole. Hook and sinker came with it, and a tiny, wriggling, silver fish, about a finger long, shot into the air. But Fred had not been careful to select his stand, and he drove his line and fish up among the branches of a tree.

      "Now you've done it – and likely scared my trout," exclaimed Bobby.

      Fred, in his usual impulsive fashion, tried to jerk back his line. The hook and sinker were caught around a branch. The shiner dropped off the hook and rested in a crotch of the branch. No fish ever was transformed into a bird so quickly since fishing was begun!

      And while Bobby laughed, and held his sides, Fred jerked at the entangled line again and again until, stepping too far back, and pulling too hard, the line chanced to give a foot or two, Master Fred fell backwards and —flop! into the deep pool below the rock he went!

      CHAPTER IV

      AN EVENTFUL AFTERNOON

      "On! oh! oh! – gurgle! gurgle! blob! Help! Give us a hand – "

      Down Master Fred went again, and, his mouth being open, he swallowed more of the murky water of the creek than was good for him. He came up, coughing and blowing.

      Bobby, although forced to laugh, extended the butt of his own fish pole and Fred seized it. In half a minute he was on the bank, panting and "blowing bubbles," as Bobby said.

      "You can laugh – "

      "I hope so," returned Bobby, turning to give his attention to his own hook and line. "Oh!"

      Something was the matter down under that stump; the water was agitated. The taut line pulled in Bobby's hands.

      "Oh! A bite!" cried he, picking up his pole. "Oh, Fred! I've hooked that old trout!"

      Master Martin was too much taken up with his own affairs just then to pay much attention. Bobby, all of a tremble (for he had never caught a trout over a finger long), began to "play" the fish cautiously. It seemed to be sulking down in its hole under the old stump. Bobby pulled on the line gently.

      Meanwhile Fred, getting his breath, began to remove his saturated garments.

      "I guess," he grunted, "we might as well go in swimming right now. Gee! I'm wet. And these things will have to dry before I start home. Oh!"

      Bobby's line "gave" suddenly. Bobby uttered a yell, for he thought the trout had jumped.

      Whatever was on his hook shot to the surface of the brown pool. Bobby went over backward on the grass. The point of his pole stood straight up, and the hook was snapped out of the water.

      There was a long, black, squirmy thing on the hook. As Bobby squealed, the eel flopped right down into his face!

      "Aw! ouch! take him off!" shouted Bobby, and flung away his pole.

      In a second the eel was so tangled in the fishline that one might have thought it and the line had been tied into a hard knot! Fred was rolling with laughter on the bank, his wet shirt half over his head.

      "Scubbity-yow!" he shrieked. "Now you got it. You laughed at me, Bobby Blake. See how you get it yourself."

      Bobby began to laugh, too. He could see that the joke was, after all, on him.

      "And that's your big trout – ho, ho!" shouted Fred. "An old eel. Kill him with a club, Bobby. You'll never get him untangled if you don't."

      "And he'll wiggle then till the sun goes down. Just like a snake," declared Bobby, repeating a boyish superstition held infallible by the boys of Clinton.

      "Oh, dear!" sighed Fred, at last pulling the wet shirt off. "I'm aching for laughing. What a mess that line's in."

      "And how about your own!" demanded Bobby, on a broad grin again, and pointing into the branches of the tree where Fred had flung his shiner.

      "We're a pair of fine fishermen – I don't think!" admitted Fred, in some disgust.

      He got off the remainder of his wet clothing, and slipped on his trunks.

      "You might as well do the same, Bobby," he advised, while he laid his clothing over the low bushes back from the bank of the creek, where the sun could get at them nicely. "Look at your shirt. All slime from that old eel."

      "I wish he'd keep still a minute," said Bobby, with some impatience. "What were eels ever made for?"

      "They're good eating, some folks think. But I'd just as lief eat snakes."

      "Some savages eat snakes," said Bobby, trying to keep one foot on the tail-end of the eel, and unwinding the fishline.

      But the next moment the squirmy creature wound itself up in the line again into a harder knot than before.

      "Looks just like the worm he swallowed," chuckled Fred. "There! he's got the hook out of his mouth. Fling him back, Bobby!"

      Bobby did so, pitching eel and line into the water. There was a flop or two and the wriggling fish got free. Then Bobby hauled in his line and began to rebait the hook.

      "I guess I'll try fishing somewhere else," he said. "I won't try here. If there ever was a trout under that stump, he's scared away."

      "There never was a trout where an old eel made his nest," scoffed Fred, struggling with his own line.

      "That eel didn't belong here," announced Bobby, with confidence. "What do you bet I don't catch a trout to-day?"

      "Never mind. I've landed one fish," chuckled Fred.

      "Fish! what's it doing roosting in that tree, then!" demanded Bobby, giggling. "It's a bird."

      Fred managed to untangle his own line, and in doing so he shook the shiner out of the branches.

      "Catch it!" he shouted. "There it goes!"

      "Plop!" the fish went right into the pool, and with a wiggle of its tail disappeared.

      "We're a couple of healthy fishermen," scoffed Bobby. "We land them, and then lose them."

      "Le's go farther down stream. We've made so much noise here that we couldn't catch anything but deaf fish – that's sure."

      Bobby was quite agreed to this, and Fred in his bathing trunks, leaving his wet clothing to dry on the bushes, led the way along the creek bank. Bobby followed with the can of worms.

      They found another quiet place and this time both took pains to cast their lines where no overhanging branches would interfere with the tips of their poles. The creek was well stocked with sunfish, yellow perch, shiners, and small brook trout. Once – "in a dog's age," Fred's Uncle Jim said – somebody landed a big trout out of one of the deeper holes in the stream.

      The boys fished for an hour, and both landed perch and shiners.

      "If we get enough of them we can have a fish supper," declared Fred.

      "At home?"

      "Sure. We can clean them – "

      "Who'll cook them? Our Meena won't," declared Bobby, with confidence.

      "And I don't suppose our girl will, either. Besides, we'd have to catch a bushel to give the crowd at our house a taste, even," for there were five young Martins at Fred's house, besides himself, ranging from the baby who could just toddle around, to Fred's fourteen year old sister, Mary. There was another girl older than Fred, who was the oldest boy.

      "Just wish Michael Mulcahey would light a fire in his stove and pan them for us," said Bobby, wistfully. "'Member, he did once!"

      "Yes. But we haven't caught enough yet."

      "Hush!" murmured Bobby. "I got another bite."

      In a minute he had landed a nice, big sunfish. He cut a birch twig then, with a hook on the end of it, and strung his three fish. Fred did the same for his two, and the fish were let down into the cool water, and were thus kept alive.

      They moved farther down the creek after a bit, and tried another pool. The strings of fish grew steadily. It looked, really, as though they would have enough for supper – and it takes a right good number of such little fish to make a meal for two hungry boys.

      Not

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