Old Peter now went down toward the woods, while I walked up the little stream.  I had seen trout-brooks before, but never one so diminutive as this.  However, when I came nearer to the point where the stream issued from between two of the foot-hills of the mountains, which lifted their forest-covered heights in the distance, I found it wider and shallower, breaking over its rocky bottom in sparkling little cascades.

Fishing in such a jolly little stream, surrounded by this mountain scenery, and with the privileges of the beautiful situation all to myself, would have been a joy to me if I had had never a bite.  But no such ill-luck befell me.  Peter had given me the can of grasshoppers after putting half of them into his own bait-box, and these I used with much success.  It was grasshopper season, and the trout were evidently on the lookout for them.  I fished in the ripples under the little waterfalls; and every now and then I drew out a lively trout.  Most of these were of moderate size, and some of them might have been called small.  The large ones probably fancied the forest shades, where old Peter went.  But all I caught were fit for the table, and I was very well satisfied with the result of my sport.

About noon I began to feel hungry, and thought it time to look up the old man, who had the lunch-basket.  I walked down the bank of the brook, and some time before I reached the woods I came to a place where it expanded to a width of about ten feet.  The water here was very clear, and the motion quiet, so that I could easily see to the bottom, which did not appear to be more than a foot below the surface.  Gazing into this transparent water, as I walked, I saw a large trout glide across the stream, and disappear under the grassy bank which overhung the opposite side.  I instantly stopped.  This was a much larger fish than any I had caught, and I determined to try for him.

I stepped back from the bank, so as to be out of sight, and put a fine grasshopper on my hook; then I lay, face downward, on the grass, and worked myself slowly forward until I could see the middle of the stream; then quietly raising my pole, I gave my grasshopper a good swing, as if he had made a wager to jump over the stream at its widest part.  But as he certainly would have failed in such an ambitious endeavor, especially if he had been caught by a puff of wind, I let him come down upon the surface of the water, a little beyond the middle of the brook.  Grasshoppers do not sink when they fall into the water, and so I kept this fellow upon the surface, and gently moved him along, as if, with all the conceit taken out of him by the result of his ill-considered leap, he was ignominiously endeavoring to swim to shore.  As I did this, I saw the trout come out from under the bank, move slowly toward the grasshopper, and stop directly under him.  Trembling with anxiety and eager expectation, I endeavored to make the movements of the insect still more natural, and, as far as I