his side; but even yet he is a heavy weight on the line, and it seems a wonder that so slight a thing as the leader can guide and draw him.  Now he is close to the boat.  The boatman steps out on a rock with his gaff.  Steadily now and slowly, lift the rod, bending it backward.  A quick sure stroke of the steel! a great splash! and the salmon is lifted upon the shore.  How he flounces about on the stones.  Give him the coup de grace at once, for his own sake as well as for ours.  And now look at him, as he lies there on the green leaves.  Broad back; small head tapering to a point; clean, shining sides with a few black spots on them; it is a fish fresh-run from the sea, in perfect condition, and that is the reason why he has given such good sport.

We must try for another before we go back.  Again fortune favours us, and at eleven o’clock we pole up the river to the camp with two good salmon in the canoe.  Hardly have we laid them away in the ice-box, when Favonius comes dropping down from Patapedia with three fish, one of them a twenty-four pounder.  And so the morning’s work is done.

In the evening, after dinner, it was our custom to sit out on the deck, watching the moonlight as it fell softly over the black hills and changed the river into a pale flood of rolling gold.  The fragrant wreaths of smoke floated lazily away on the faint breeze of night.  There was no sound save the rushing of the water and the crackling of the camp-fire on the shore.  We talked of many things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth; touching lightly here and there as the spirit of vagrant converse led us.  Favonius has the good sense to talk about himself occasionally and tell his own experience.  The man who will not do that must always be a dull companion.  Modest egoism is the salt of conversation:  you do not want too much of it; but if it is altogether omitted, everything tastes flat.  I remember well the evening when he told me the story of the Sheep of the Wilderness.

“I was ill that summer,” said he, “and the doctor had ordered me to go into the woods, but on no account to go without plenty of fresh meat, which was essential to my recovery.  So we set out into the wild country north of Georgian Bay, taking a live sheep with us in order to be sure that the doctor’s prescription might be faithfully followed.  It was a young and innocent little beast, curling itself up at my feet in the canoe, and following me about on shore like a dog.  I gathered grass every day to feed it, and carried it in my arms over the rough portages.  It ate out of my hand and rubbed its woolly head against my leggings.  To my dismay, I found that I was beginning to love it for its own sake and without any ulterior motives.  The thought of killing and eating it became more and more painful to me, until at length the fatal fascination was complete, and my trip became practically an exercise of devotion to that sheep.  I carried it everywhere and ministered fondly to its wants.  Not for the world would I have alluded to mutton in its presence.  And when we returned to civilisation I parted from the creature with sincere regret and the consciousness that I had humoured my affections at the expense of my digestion.  The sheep did not give me so much as a look of farewell, but fell to feeding on the grass beside the farm-house with an air of placid triumph.”