water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor.  I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat.  The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg.  This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string.  The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the line on the reel.  More butt; more indignation on the part of the captive.  The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and I was getting exhausted.  We had been back and forth across the lake, and round and round the lake.  What I feared was that the trout would start up the inlet and wreck us in the bushes.  But he had a new fancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre which I had never read of.  Instead of coming straight towards me, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit.  I reeled in, and kept my eye on him.  Round and round he went, narrowing his circle.  I began to suspect the game; which was, to twist my head off.—­When he had reduced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water.  It would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to the occasion.  Instead of turning round with him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing.  Round went the fish, and round we went like a top.  I saw a line of Mount Marcys all round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west made a broad band of pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens.  We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled.  I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and line, and all, if he would only go the other way for a change.

When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side.  After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound.  Fish always lose by being “got in and dressed.”  It is best to weigh them while they are in the water.  The only really large one I ever caught got away with my leader when I first struck him.  He weighed ten pounds.

IV

A-HUNTING OF THE DEER

If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self-sacrificing sportsmen who have cleared the Adirondack regions of catamounts and savage trout, what shall be said of the army which has so nobly relieved them of the terror of the deer?  The deer-slayers have somewhat celebrated their exploits in print; but I think that justice has never been done them.