Toby having been over the route took it upon himself to act as guide to the expedition. Indeed, a tyro could have found the way, for in going and coming they had left quite a plain trail, easily followed. Of course Jack was interested in everything he saw. Toby frequently called his attention to certain features of the landscape which apparently had appealed to his love of the beautiful on the former occasion. This showed that Toby kept his eyes about him pretty much all the time; it also proved him to have an appreciation of Nature's handiwork, rather unusual in a boy. They did not take much more than half an hour to cross over to the bank of the Paradise River. Toby himself remembered skating this far up the stream several winters back, but everything looked so entirely different in the summer-time that he could hardly be positive about this. It was a pretty scene, and with not a living human being in sight quite appealed to Jack. Birds flitted from tree to tree; small woods animals were to be seen frequently, and Toby even showed Jack where a deer had been down to drink, leaving there a plain series of delicate hoof tracks. "Now let's try the place that treated me best of all," he went on to say, with all the consequential airs of a first discoverer. "I want several pictures of this spot," Jack remarked, "but they will do better along about ten o'clock, when the sun gets stronger, and the contrasts are more striking. Besides, the fishing must come first, and its always in its prime early in the morning. So get busy, Toby, and let's see who lands the first bass." Jack himself was something of a fisherman, as Toby well understood. Indeed, he knew more about the habits of the tricky bass than any of the boys in Chester; for as a rule they had been content simply to angle with a worm, and take "pot-luck," while Jack had read up on the subject, and even done more or less fancy fly fishing amidst other scenes. Nevertheless Toby got the first fish. Perhaps this was because he knew just how deep the water was, where a favorite swirl had yielded him several finny prizes on the occasion of his former visit; or possibly just through "dumb luck," as he called it. There is no accounting for the freaks of fishing; a greenhorn is just as apt as not to haul in the biggest bass ever taken in a lake, where an accomplished angler has taken a thousand smaller fish from year to year, yet never landed such a prize. "Fisherman's luck" has thus long become a famous saying. However, Toby was not too exultant over his success. He fancied that before they were done with the morning's sport Jack would be giving him a pretty lively chase for the honors.