“What do you want?” questioned the proprietor. “I want to weigh that fish.” In a low voice that could not reach the Senior in the adjoining dining-room, the landlord said: “Never mind. I’ll tell you. That fish weighs just five pounds.” And that unsuspicious old man went back home and bragged of his thirteen-pound muskie, while the Preacher said never a word. What’s the use of spoiling a good story? Some people seem to be naturally skeptical about fish stories. They should not be, for tales of piscatorial adventure are peculiar in that, no matter how big they are made, they can never equal the facts. The Preacher had just come to his new parish, and after a month or so of work there had taken a trip to the Nepigon. He could do nothing less, on his return, than tell stories of big trout, for there were no others to tell about. At the dinner table in one of the homes of his parish he had been relating some of his fishing adventures on the famous stream, of an eight-pound trout taken at Victoria Pool and the numbers that went four and five pounds each, when the hostess, a vivacious and witty woman, threw up her hands and jocularly exclaimed: “For Heaven’s sake! What sort of a pastor have we drawn?” It was a year or two later that the Preacher, when spending a few days on Tomahawk Lake, caught a muskie that went a little over seventeen pounds. Recalling the skepticism of his parishioner, he had the fish packed in a box where it could lie out at full length, surrounded it with moss and ice, and expressed it to the doubter. When he reached home again the skeptic had been soundly converted from the error of her ways. On their first meeting after the reception of the muskie, she said: “Pastor, after this you may tell any fish-lie you like and I will swear to it.” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Days in the Open, by Lathan A. Crandall