Returning one evening to our quarters, which were now in the “Yard,” I found Tom seated with a blank sheet before him, thrusting his hand through his hair and biting the end of his penholder to a pulp.  In his muttering, which was mixed with the curious, stingless profanity of which he was master, I caught the name of Cheyne, and I knew that he was facing the crisis of a fortnightly theme.  The subject assigned was a narrative of some personal experience, and it was to be handed in on the morrow.  My own theme was already, written.

“I’ve been holding down this chair for an hour, and I can’t seem to think of a thing.”  He rose to fling himself down on the lounge.  “I wish I was in Canada.”

“Why Canada?”

“Trout fishing with Uncle Jake at that club of his where he took me last summer.”  Tom gazed dreamily at the ceiling.  “Whenever I have some darned foolish theme like this to write I want to go fishing, and I want to go like the devil.  I’ll get Uncle Jake to take you, too, next summer.”

“I wish you would.”

“Say, that’s living all right, Hughie, up there among the tamaracks and balsams!” And he began, for something like the thirtieth time, to relate the adventures of the trip.

As he talked, the idea presented itself to me with sudden fascination to use this incident as the subject of Tom’s theme; to write it for him, from his point of view, imitating the droll style he would have had if he had been able to write; for, when he was interested in any matter, his oral narrative did not lack vividness.  I began to ask him questions:  what were the trees like, for instance?  How did the French-Canadian guides talk?  He had the gift of mimicry:  aided by a partial knowledge of French I wrote down a few sentences as they sounded.  The canoe had upset and he had come near drowning.  I made him describe his sensations.

“I’ll write your theme for you,” I exclaimed, when he had finished.

“Gee, not about that!”

“Why not?  It’s a personal experience.”

His gratitude was pathetic....  By this time I was so full of the subject that it fairly clamoured for expression, and as I wrote the hours flew.  Once in a while I paused to ask him a question as he sat with his chair tilted back and his feet on the table, reading a detective story.  I sketched in the scene with bold strokes; the desolate bois brule on the mountain side, the polished crystal surface of the pool broken here and there with the circles left by rising fish; I pictured Armand, the guide, his pipe between his teeth, holding the canoe against the current; and I seemed to smell the sharp tang of the balsams, to hear the roar of the rapids below.  Then came the sudden hooking of the big trout, habitant oaths from Armand, bouleversement, wetness, darkness, confusion; a half-strangled feeling, a brief glimpse of green things and sunlight, and then strangulation, or what seemed like it; strangulation, the sense of being picked up and hurled by a terrific force whither? a blinding whiteness, in which it was impossible to breathe, one sharp, almost unbearable pain, then another, then oblivion....  Finally, awakening, to be confronted by a much worried Uncle Jake.