The trail grew steeper now. The young man found himself breathing a trifle quicker as he pushed upward. Sometimes he seized a limb to aid him in swinging up a rocky steep--again he parted dewy bushes that locked their branches across the way. Presently there was a sound of water falling over stones, and a moment later he had reached a brook that hurried down the mountain side, leaping and laughing as it ran. There was a narrow place and a log where the trail crossed, with a little fall and a deep pool just below it. Frank did not mean to stop for trout now, but it occurred to him to try this brook, that he might judge which was the better to fish on his return. He looked about until he found a long, slim shoot of some tough wood, and this he cut for a rod. Then he put on a bit of the line--a longer piece would not do in this little stream--and at the end he strung a short leader and two flies. It was queer, but he found his fingers trembling just a little with eagerness as he adjusted those flies; and when he held the rig at arm's length and gave it a little twitch in the old way it was not so bad, after all, he thought. As he stealthily gained the exact position where he could drop the lure on the eddy below the fall and poised the slender rod for the cast, the only earthly thing that seemed important was the placing of those two tiny bits of gimp and feathers just on that spot where the water swirled under the edge of the black overhanging rock. Gently, now--so. A quick flash, a swish, a sharp thrilling tug, an instinctive movement of the wrist, and something was leaping and glancing on the pebbles below--something dark and golden and gayly red-spotted--something which no man who has ever trailed a brook can see without a quickening heart--a speckled trout! Certainly it was but a boy who leaped down and disentangled the captured fish and held it joyously for a moment, admiring its markings and its size before dropping it into the basket at his side. "Pretty good for such a little brook," he said aloud. "I wonder if there are many like that." He made another cast, but without result. "I've frightened them," he thought. "I came lumbering down like a duffer. Besides, they can see me, here."