Then, with a delicate sidling and stooping, known only to them that fish for trout in very bright water of the summer-time,--compared with which art the coarse work of the salmon-fisher is as that of a scene-painter to Mr. Holman Hunt's--with, or in, or by, a careful manner, not to be described to those who have never studied it, Hilary won access of the water, without any doubt in the mind of the fish concerning the prudence of appetite. Then he flipped his short collar in, not with a cast, but a spring of the rod, and let his flies go quietly down a sharpish run into that good trout's hole. The worthy trout looked at them both, and thought; for he had his own favorite spot for watching the world go by, as the rest of us have. So he let the grizzled palmer pass, within an inch of his upper lip; for it struck him that the tail turned up in a manner not wholly natural, or at any rate unwholesome. He looked at the white moth also, and thought that he had never seen one at all like it. So he went down under his root again, hugging himself upon his wisdom, never moving a fin, but oaring and helming his plump, spotted sides with his tail. "Upon my word, it is too bad," said Hilary, after three beautiful throws, and exquisite management down-stream; "everything Kentish beats me hollow. Now, if that had been one of our trout, I would have laid my life upon catching him. One more throw, however. How would it be if I sunk my flies? That fellow is worth some patience." While he was speaking, his flies alit on the glassy ripple, like gnats in their love-dance; and then by a turn of the wrist, he played them just below the surface, and let them go gliding down the stickle, into the shelfy nook of shadow where the big trout hovered. Under the surface, floating thus, with the check of ductile influence, the two flies spread their wings and quivered, like a centiplume moth in a spider's web. Still the old trout, calmly oaring, looked at them both suspiciously. Why should the same flies come so often, and why should they have such crooked tails, and could he be sure that he did not spy the shadow of a human hat about twelve yards up the water? Revolving these things, he might have lived to a venerable age but for that noble ambition to teach, which is fatal to even the wisest. A young fish, an insolent whipper-snapper, jumped in his babyish way at the palmer, and missed it through over-eagerness. "I'll show you the way to catch a fly," said the big trout to him: "open your mouth like this, my son." With that he bolted the palmer, and threw up his tail, and turned to go home again. Alas! his sweet home now shall know him no more. For suddenly he was surprised by a most disagreeable sense of grittiness, and then a keen stab in the roof of his month. He jumped, in his wrath, a foot out of the water, and then heavily plunged to the depths of his hole.