climbed out, stood on their tails and reached for the fly long before it hit the water."

It was now quite dark and we were losing more fish than we saved. It was impossible to see the landing net, and we often knocked them off the hook when trying to scoop them up. We had enough fish for supper, so we decided to leave some of them for morning, went ashore, built a fire, cooked our trout and bacon, and ate supper by the light of the fire.

I have fished for trout for twenty years, more or less, and during that time caught a great many under varying conditions. It has been my fortune to catch much larger trout than any we saw in this pond, though none of these would weigh less than a pound each. But never before nor since have I met any more sporty fish than these. They were, moreover, the most beautifully marked of any trout of any variety I have ever seen. They lived in ice-water in midsummer. They were muscular and like chain lightning in action.

With every cast I experienced all the excitement, all the thrills, and went through all the strategic maneuvers that a nature writer would describe in twelve hundred words.

Lost Pond

The pond had no visible inlet, but a considerable quantity of water was flowing out of it every minute. This must be replenished through some subterraneous passage, and the water doubtless filtered through an enormous field of ice that had been buried under millions of tons of rock and earth for countless ages — since the glacial period, when the mountain slid down from the arctic regions into its present position.

Bige and I discussed it at supper, and that is how we accounted for the peculiar conditions. We were also agreed that there could now be no doubt that this was the pond of Sabattis-Parker fame. The stories fitted well with the facts. Some one surely had been here before and a long time ago, else how could the ruins of the camp and the moss-covered dugout be satisfactorily explained?

That night Bige and I went to bed with clear consciences. We were at peace with all the world. We had put in a long and strenuous day, had met and overcome many obstacles and difficulties, and had accomplished something worth while. We had recovered and put back on the map a pond which had been lost for more than thirty years. Incidentally, we had had a lot of fun in doing it. A pair of hermit thrushes holding converse with each other across the valley and high over our heads sang us to sleep.

We were awake in the morning before the sun and in our skiff out on the pond casting with great care our most alluring flies. We whipped every square inch of that pond. We spent two hours and a half on it, used every fly in the book, and never got a rise. We never even saw a trout big or little. We could have seen them had they been there. It was not more than three feet to the bottom in the deepest part, and we could see the bottom and everything, animate and inanimate, in the water. The shoals of trout we had seen and heard — some of which we had eaten — the night before, had disappeared utterly and completely. Bige said "They have gone back into the ice-chest."

The conviction finally forced itself through our dense intellectual domes that the trout in Lost Pond gave attention to business only at night. This was a night fish pond. We should have to wait until night for another bite.

Slowly and sadly we poled back to camp. The sight that met us on landing, to employ a stock literary expression, "would have made the stoutest heart quail." It would surely be stating it mildly to say that we were amazed.

The pack-basket which contained our provisions we had left standing just inside the tent flap. It had been dragged out and was now lying on its side several feet from the tent, while remnants of its contents were scattered over the forest carpet in every direction. A bag of flour, intended for