In a corner of the vegetable garden where I had dug horse-radish a few mornings before, I had seen some exceedingly plethoric angle-worms; and after running to the wood-house and securing a fish-hook, pole and line which Addison kept there, ready strung, I seized an old tin quart, and going to the garden, with a few deep thrusts of the shovel, turned out a score or two of those great pale-purple, wriggling worms. These I as hastily hustled into the quart along with a pint or more of the dirt, then snatching up my pole, ran down to the field where Nell was waiting for me, seated on one of my lately piled stone heaps. "Come, hurry now," said she; and away we went over the wall and through brakes and bushes, down into the swamp, and then along the old road in the woods, till we came out at the high conical knoll, covered with sapling pines, to the left of the old mill dam. There we espied Kate and Theodora sitting quietly on a log. "Oh, we thought that you never would come," said the former in a low tone. "But creep along here. Don't make a noise. They've come around six times, Ellen, since you went away. I never saw trout do so before. I believe they are lost and are exploring, or looking for some way out of this pond. I guess they came down out of North Pond along the Foy Brook; for they are too large for brook trout. They will be back here in a few minutes, again. Now bait the hook and drop in before they come back. Then sit still, and when they come, just move the bait a little and I think you'll get a bite." I followed this advice and sat for some minutes, dangling a big angle-worm out in the deep water, off the inner wall of the dam, while my three companions watched the water. Presently Theodora whispered that they were coming again; and then I saw what was, indeed, from a piscatorial point of view, a rare spectacle. First the water waved deep down, near the bottom, and seemed filled with dark moving objects, showing here and there the sheen of light brown and a glimmer of flashing red specks, as the sunlight fell in among them. For an instant I was so intent on the sight, that I quite forgot my hook. "Bob it now," whispered Kate, excitedly. I had scarcely given my hook a bob up and down when, with a grand rush and snap, a big trout grabbed worm, hook and all. Instinctively I gave a great yank and swung him heavily out of the water, my pole bending half double. The trout was securely hooked, or I should have lost him, for he fell first on some drift logs and slid down betwixt them into the water again. Seizing the line in my hands, since the pole was too light for the fish, I contrived to lift him up and land him high and dry on the dam, close at the feet of the girls. "Well done!" Theodora whispered. "Oh, isn't he a noble great one, and how like sport he jumps about! Too bad to take his life when he's so handsome and was having such a good time among his mates!"