Then, with his fly wound up close to the top ring of his short rod, he would pass it through the leaves and twigs with the greatest care and unwind again, letting the fly descend till it dropped lightly on the surface. This he did patiently in fully a dozen different places, winding up after each attempt, and then cautiously following the edge of the stream to try again wherever he came upon a suitable spot. But upon that particular occasion the trout were not at home at the lairs he tried, or else not hungry, so the fly was drawn up again for fresh trials. "It's too hot," muttered the boy. But he had all the good qualities of a fisherman, including patience and perseverance, and he went on and on deeper and deeper into the forest, managing so skilfully that he never once entangled his line. It was very beautiful there in the soft shades. The sun was almost completely shut out, and in some of the openings the pools looked absolutely black, while Waller, perfectly confident that there were plenty of good pound trout lurking in this hiding-place of theirs, went on and on. He had left the outskirts of the forest far behind, threading the rugged oaks, to make his way through the undergrowth that flourished amongst the beeches--huge forest monarchs that had once been pollarded by the foresters of old, to sprout out again upon losing their heads into a cluster of fresh stems, each a big tree--so ancient that, as the boy gazed back at them from where he wound his way in and out, following the curves and zigzags of the little river, he asked himself why it was that this tract of land was called the New Forest, where everything looked so old. "How stupid!" he muttered, the next moment. "I forgot. Of course, it was because William Rufus made it for hunting in. It was new then if it isn't now. I wonder whether he ever fished for trout," added the boy, with a laugh. "Good thing for him if he had; people who go fishing don't often get shot. Ah! there ought to be one here." The denseness of the briars and wild-rose tangles had forced him to make a _detour_, and now, on drawing near the river again, he came upon so likely a spot that, practising the greatest caution, he dropped his big ugly fly through what was quite a hole in the overgrowth of verdure, beneath which the water lay still and dark. He was quite right. He felt that there ought to be a fish there waiting for some big fat caterpillar or fly to drop from the leaves above; and his ugly lure had hardly touched the surface of the water before there was a loud smack, a disturbance as if a stone had been thrown in to fall without a splash, and a well-hooked trout was darting here and there at the end of the short line, making frantic struggles to escape.