find the prisoner guilty of the popcorn just as he says, he announced, "but

not of the oats and corn that was missed afterwards. We figure that a family that never owned a hoss would n't have no use for oats, and the Judge's charge was n't necessary to remind us that no descendant of the Comstocks was n't likely to steal corn which had got to be shelled."

The Judge beamed with approval upon the jury, then addressed himself to the audience.

"I suppose you are all thinking," he said slowly, "that there is n't much hope for a young man made up of Comstock and Meecham in equal parts, and he might as well be in jail where he can't steal as out of jail where he 's liable to. You may be right. But you will remember, as I do, that Ezekiel Meecham's maternal grandfather was an honorable and God-fearing man, and as I have watched the prisoner these last two days his resemblance to that ancestor has grown upon me. I believe there's the making of a good citizen in him, and the state can't afford to lose it by fixing the jail-mark upon him at his age. Therefore, instead of sentencing him to a term of imprisonment, I condemn him to pay one hundred dollars fine and the costs of this trial, and to be committed to jail until such fine is paid."

"It practically amounts to imprisonment for life," the sheriff declared, lingering in the room after court adjourned for the day. "No Meecham livin' ever saw a hundred dollars all to once." But the Judge, standing erect and dignified by the clerk's desk, was counting crisp bills from a well-filled pocketbook.

"I have paid your fine," he explained a moment later to the embarrassed but grateful prisoner. "One hundred and thirty-eight dollars in all. You can repay me at your leisure."

Ruel Meecham flushed angrily at the laugh which arose. "I hope to die if

I don't pay it," he declared. fellows just wait and see."

"You

There was no lack of dignity upon Judge Preston's part as he sat in the judicial seat listening to the last case of the term. The fragrance of lilacs and early roses floated through the open window, and the blue river, only a few yards distant, was filled with a surging mass of brown logs, which indicated that "the drive" had reached Norridgewock. But neither beauty of nature nor the skillful gymnastics of red-shirted river drivers had power to distract the Judge's attention from his work. The courtroom was crowded, for the case of Deborah B. Gilman against Lysander R. Gilman had attracted wide attention, and the sympathy of the whole county round about was divided between the nervous little woman suing for divorce, after a quarter century of married life, and the bluff, hard-handed farmer who admitted in aggrieved tone that he shared his wife's desire for separation, but "did n't want it made to look as if he was the only one to blame.'

The

It was an old story. Judge Preston in his legal career had heard it many times before. An overworked, colorless life for the woman, ending in irritated nerves and fretful complaining, which aroused the man to indignant retaliation. "Incompatibility of temperament' was the plea advanced by the youthful attorney of the wife. jury had been dismissed, and their places were crowded with interested spectators. The wife's relatives upon one side of the room glared at the husband's family connections upon the other. Judge Preston listened without question or comment to long examinations and crossexaminations of neighbors, relatives, and friends. Deborah Gilman, it appeared from the testimony her counsel introduced, had turned her dresses and re-trimmed her bonnets, growing shabbier each year; had discontinued neighborly visits because "the team" was always needed for farm work; had

cheerfully donated butter and egg money to the purchase of new farmingtools, and performed her housework all "by hand," while her husband rejoiced in labor-saving implements for out-ofdoor work. The principal witness in her behalf was the hired man, a loquacious individual, with oiled hair and a red necktie.

"I never see a woman have a harder time," Seth Jackson declared. "He wa'n't never willin' for her to go nowhere nor have nothin'." When pressed for more specific information Seth's testimony was largely interspersed with "I told hers" and "said she to mes.'

Lysander Gilman sat with crimson face, and eyes fixed upon the floor, during the long recital of his wife's wrongs. The plaintiff sobbed hysterically. "It's worse 'n I thought come to tell it out in court," she declared.

When the defense opened Lysander Gilman drew a long breath of relief, and as it proceeded his head became more erect. "Lysander never had new clothes, neither, a neighbor declared. "Lots of times he coaxed her to go to the Grange, and she would n't, because she'd rather stay to home and hook rugs. She was hookin' from mornin' till night when she could get a minute, and a good part of the egg money she spent for colorin' stuff. All the money they saved was put in the bank in her name. Mebbe they ain't lived very peaceful together, but Deborah's just as much to blame as Lysander."

Judge Preston offered no comment when, as principal witness for the defense, Seth Jackson was called. Seth, bent upon doing his full duty in every relation of life, made quite as strong a witness for the defendant's cause as he had for the plaintiff.

The late afternoon sun streamed through elm branches into the dusty courtroom as, testimony and pleas concluded, Judge Preston rose in his place.

"You may have shown," he said addressing the two counsel, "abundant reason why the law should grant divorce to the two petitioners now before this tribunal. But it is an impossible petition for this Court to grant. I married this couple myself down in Bloomfield just twenty-five years ago. I married them good and strong in the fear of the Lord, and in the presence of two reliable witnesses, both of whom are here present to-day. I did n't marry them for a quarter of a century, or a half of a century, but for whatsoever time of mortal life should be given, until death did them part. What God and Ebenezer Preston have joined together, Ebenezer Preston, alone and single-handed, is n't going to put asunder.

"Lysander Gilman and Deborah Gilman stand up, the Judge demanded. The two rose uncertainly in their places; neither looked toward the other. "Join hands," the Judge continued sternly. There was a moment's hesitation, then the two came nearer together, and Deborah's thin fingers slipped nervously into Lysander's sunburned palm. "I sentence you both," declared the Judge, "to go back to your home and live the remainder of your lives in peace and affection one towards the other. Lysander, as you go through Bloomfield village, you stop and buy your wife a white bonnet with pink roses. It may not be the height of fashion for women of her age to-day, but it's what she needs. And then you buy a pound of peppermints such as you had in your pocket on your wedding day, and you two eat every one of them on the way out home. Deborah, you go home and make hot biscuit for supper, and to-morrow morning you put away that rug-hook forevermore. Hereafter, when your housework is done, and there's nowhere to go, you sit out un

A DEFECTIVE logic is the born fisherman's portion. He is a pattern of inconsistency. He does the things which he ought not to do, and he leaves undone the things which other people think he ought to do. He observes the wind when he should be sowing, and he regards the clouds, with temptation tugging familiarly at his heartstrings, when he might be grasping the useful sickle. It is a wonder that there is so much health in him. A sorrowing political economist remarked to me in early boyhood, as a jolly red-bearded neighbor, followed by an abnormally fat dog, sauntered past us for his nooning: "That man is the best carpenter in town, but he will leave the most important job whenever he wants to go fishing." I stared at the sinful carpenter, who swung along leisurely in the May sunshine, keeping just ahead of his dog. To leave one's job in order to go fishing! How illogical!

Years bring the reconciling mind. The world grows big enough to include within its scheme both the instructive political economist and the truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed

up to my den under the eaves last night a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December sleet crackling against the window-panes in order to varnish a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be put in order in September, when the fishing closes, or else in April, when it opens. To varnish a rod in December proves that one possesses either a dilatory or a childishly anticipatory mind. But before uncorking the varnish bottle, it occurred to me to examine a dogeared, water-stained fly-book, to guard against the ravages of possible moths. This interlude proved fatal to the varnishing. A half hour went happily by in rearranging the flies. Then, with a fisherman's lack of sequence, as I picked out here and there a plain snell-hook from the gaudy feathered ones, I said to myself with a generous glow at the heart: "Fly-fishing has had enough sacred poets celebrating it already. Is n't there a good deal to be said, after all, for fishing with a worm?"

Let us face the worst at the very beginning. It shall be a shameless example of fishing under conditions that make the fly a mockery. Take the Taylor Brook, "between the roads," on the headwaters of the Lamoille. The place is a jungle. The swamp maples and cedars were felled a generation ago, and the tops were trimmed into the brook. The alders and moosewood are higher than your head; on every tiny knoll the fir balsams have gained a footing, and creep down, impenetrable, to the edge of the water. In the open spaces the JoePye weed swarms. In two minutes after leaving the upper road you have scared a mink or a rabbit, and you have probably lost the brook. Listen! It is only a gurgle here, droning along, smooth and dark, under the tangle of cedar-tops and the shadow of the balsams. Follow the sound cautiously. There, beyond the Joe-Pye weed, and between the stump and the cedar-top, is a hand'sbreadth of black water. Fly-casting is impossible in this maze of dead and living branches. Shorten your line to two feet, or even less, bait your hook with a worm, and drop it gingerly into that gurgling crevice of water. Before it has sunk six inches, if there is not one of those black-backed, orange-bellied, Taylor Brook trout fighting with it, something is wrong with your worm or

with you.

For the trout are always there, sheltered by the brushwood that makes this half mile of fishing "not worth while." Below the lower road the Taylor Brook becomes uncertain water. For half a mile it yields only fingerlings, for no explainable reason; then there are two miles of clean fishing through the deep woods, where the branches are so high that you can cast a fly again if you like, and there are long pools, where now and then a heavy fish will rise; then comes a final half mile through the alders, where you must wade, knee to waist deep, before you come to the bridge and the river. Glo

rious fishing is sometimes to be had here, especially if you work down the gorge at twilight, casting a white miller until it is too dark to see. But alas, there is a well-worn path along the brook, and often enough there are the very footprints of the "fellow ahead of you," signs as disheartening to the fisherman as ever were the footprints on the sand to Robinson Crusoe.

But "between the roads "it is "too much trouble to fish ; " and there lies the salvation of the humble fisherman who disdains not to use the crawling worm, nor, for that matter, to crawl himself, if need be, in order to sneak under the boughs of some overhanging cedar that casts a perpetual shadow upon the sleepy brook. Lying here at full length, with no elbow-room to manage the rod, you must occasionally even unjoint your tip, and fish with that, using but a dozen inches of line, and not letting so much as your eyebrows show above the bank. Is it a becoming attitude for a middleaged citizen of the world? That depends upon how the fish are biting. Holing a put looks rather ridiculous also, to the mere observer, but it requires, like brook-fishing with a tip only, a very delicate wrist, perfect tactile sense, and a fine disregard of appearances.

There are some fishermen who always fish as if they were being photographed. The Taylor Brook "between the roads" is not for them. To fish it at all is backbreaking, trouser-tearing work; to see it thoroughly fished is to learn new lessons in the art of angling. To watch R., for example, steadily filling his six-pound creel from that unlikely stream is like watching Sargent paint a portrait. R. weighs two hundred and ten. Twenty years ago he was a famous amateur pitcher, and among his present avocations are violin playing, which is good for the wrist, taxidermy, which is good for the eye, and shooting woodcock, which before the days of the new Nature Study used to be thought good for the whole man. R. began as a

fly-fisherman, but by dint of passing his summers near brooks where fly-fishing is impossible, he has become a stout-hearted apologist for the worm. His apparatus is most singular. It consists of a very long, cheap rod, stout enough to smash through bushes, and with the stiffest tip obtainable. The lower end of the butt, below the reel, fits into the socket of a huge extra butt of bamboo, which R. carries unconcernedly. To reach a distant hole, or to fish the lower end of a ripple, R. simply locks his reel, slips on the extra butt, and there is a fourteenfoot rod ready for action. He fishes with a line unbelievably short, and a Kendal hook far too big; and when a trout jumps for that hook, R. wastes no time in manoeuvring for position. The unlucky fish is simply "derricked," to borrow a word from Theodore, most saturnine and profane of Moosehead guides.

"Shall I play him awhile?" shouted an excited sportsman to Theodore, after hooking his first big trout.

66

no!" growled Theodore in disgust. "Just derrick him right into the canoe!" A heroic method, surely; though it once cost me the best squaretail I ever hooked, for Theodore had forgotten the landing-net, and the gut broke in his fingers as he tried to swing the fish aboard. But with these lively quarter-pounders of the Taylor Brook, derricking is a safer procedure. Indeed, I have sat dejectedly on the far end of a log, after fishing the hole under it in vain, and seen the mighty R. wade downstream close behind me, adjust that comical extra butt, and jerk a couple of halfpound trout from under the very log on which I was sitting. His device on this occasion, as I well remember, was to pass his hook but once through the middle of a big worm, let the worm sink to the bottom, and crawl along it at his leisure. The trout could not resist.

Once, and once only, have I come near equaling R.'s record, and the way he beat me then is the justification for a

whole philosophy of worm-fishing. We were on this very Taylor Brook, and at five in the afternoon both baskets were two thirds full. By count had just one more fish than he. It was raining hard. "You fish down through the alders," said R. magnanimously. "I'll cut across and wait for you at the saw mill. I don't want to get any wetter, on account of my rheumatism."

-

This was rather barefaced kindness, - for whose rheumatism was ever the worse for another hour's fishing? But I weakly accepted it. I coveted three or four good trout to top off with, that was all. So I tied on a couple of flies, and began to fish the alders, wading waist deep in the rapidly rising water, down the long green tunnel under the curving boughs. The brook fairly smoked with the rain, by this time, but when did one fail to get at least three or four trout out of this best half mile of the lower brook? Yet I had no luck. I tried one fly after another, and then, as a forlorn hope, though it sometimes has a magic of its own, I combined a brown hackle for the tail fly with a twisting worm on the dropper. Not a rise! I thought of R. sitting patiently in the saw mill, and I fished more conscientiously than ever.

Venture as warily, use the same skill, Do your best, whether winning or losing it, If you choose to play! — is my principle. Even those lines, which by some subtle telepathy of the trout brook murmur themselves over and over to me in the waning hours of an unlucky day, brought now no consolation. There was simply not one fish to be had, to any fly in the book, out of that long, drenching, darkening tunnel. At last I climbed out of the brook, by the bridge. R. was sitting on the fence, his neck and ears carefully turtled under his coat collar, the smoke rising and the rain dripping from the inverted bowl of his pipe. He did not seem to be worrying about his rheumatism.