I covered the rest of the fish in my basket with wet plantain leaves, and laid my trout king on this cool green bed.  Then I hurried off to the old man, whom I saw coming out of the woods.  When I opened my basket and showed him what I had caught, Peter looked surprised, and, taking up the trout, examined it.

“Why, this is a big fellow,” he said.  “At first I thought it was Barney Sloat’s boss trout, but it isn’t long enough for him.  Barney showed me his trout, that gen’rally keeps in a deep pool, where a tree has fallen over the stream down there.  Barney tells me he often sees him, and he’s been tryin’ fur two years to ketch him, but he never has, and I say he never will, fur them big trout’s got too much sense to fool round any kind of victuals that’s got a string to it.  They let a little fish eat all he wants, and then they eat him.  How did you ketch this one?”

I gave an account of the manner of the capture, to which Peter listened with interest and approval.

“If you’d a stood off and made a cast at that feller, you’d either have caught him at the first flip, which isn’t likely, as he didn’t seem to want no feather flies, or else you’d a skeered him away.  That’s all well enough in the tumblin’ water, where you gen’rally go fur trout, but the man that’s got the true feelin’ fur fish will try to suit his idees to theirs, and if he keeps on doin’ that, he’s like to learn a thing or two that may do him good.  That’s a fine fish, and you ketched him well.  I’ve got a lot of ’em, but nothin’ of that heft.”

After luncheon we fished for an hour or two with no result worth recording, and then we started for home.  A couple of partridges ran across the road some distance ahead of us, and these gave Peter an idea.

“Do you know,” said he, “if things go on as they’re goin’ on now, that there’ll come a time when it won’t be considered high-toned sport to shoot a bird slam-bang dead.  The game gunners will pop ’em with little harpoons, with long threads tied to ’em, and the feller that can tire out his bird, and haul him in with the longest and thinnest piece of spool thread, will be the crackest sportsman.”

At this point I remarked to my companion that perhaps he was a little hard on the game fishermen.

“Well,” said old Peter, with a smile on his corrugated visage, “I reckon I’d have to do a lot of talkin’ before I’d git even with ’em, fur the way they give me the butt for my style of fishin’.  What I say behind their backs I say to their faces.  I seed one of these fellers once with a fish on his hook, that he was runnin’ up an’ down the stream like a chased chicken.  ‘Why don’t you pull him in?’ says I.  ’And break my rod an’ line?’ says he.  ‘Why don’t you have a stronger line and pole?’ says I.  ‘There wouldn’t be no science in that,’ says he.  ’If it’s your science you want to show off,’ says I, ’you ought to fish for mud eels.  There’s more game in ’em than there is in any other fish round here, and as they’re mighty lively out of water you might play one of ’em fur half an hour after you got him on shore, and it would take all your science to keep him from reelin’ up his end of the line faster than you could yourn.’”