The employment of another half-hour fully sufficed to place the canoe of the hunter in the smooth water above the rapids; when the latter, with a cheery “heigh ho,” at each light dip of his springy oar, struck off towards the foot of the pine-covered hills that lift their green summits from the western shores of the lake, leaving his young companion to proceed to his allotted portion of the sports or labors of the day. Preparing his long fishing-rod and tackle, according to the instructions which the hunter had given him for adapting his mode of fishing to the locality and season, Claud made his way along down the edge of the stream to a designated point, a short distance above the place where, on the occurrence of the incident before described, they had ceased to ascend the rapids in their canoes. He here found, as he had been told, below a traversing reach of bare breakers, a large, deep eddy of gently revolving water, in the centre of which lay tossing on the swell a broad spiral wreath of spotless foam. The hunter, in selecting these rapids, and especially this resting-spot of the ascending fish, as the place where he could safely warrant the taking of the needed supply of trout, had not spoken without knowledge; for it may well be doubted whether there could be found, in all the regions of the north, a reach of running water of equal length with this wild and singularly picturesque portion of the Androscoggin river, containing such quantities of this beautiful fish as are found about midsummer, swarming up the rapids on their way from the Umbagog to the upper lakes.