“Well, I suppose we might as well go back now,” said Fred. “It’ll be dark before long.”

“All right,” agreed Grant, reluctantly. “I wish I might have caught a trout like that one of yours though.”

“I’ll stay if you want to.”

“No, I guess not,” said Grant. “As you say it will be dark soon and we might as well go back.”

“Get your rod then and we’ll start.”

Grant returned to the spot where he had been standing when Fred called him, and picking up his rod soon joined his companion. Together they made their way back to camp rehearsing the story of the big trout’s capture time and again during the journey.

“The others don’t seem to have returned yet,” remarked Grant when they had arrived at their destination. “Shall we wait for them?”

“I don’t see the use. Let’s clean some of the fish and get ready for supper.”

“You’re not going to eat that big one, are you?”

“I’m not going to touch it yet, that’s sure. I want to show it to Pop first.”

“Aren’t you going to stuff it and take it home?”

“I don’t believe I can,” said Fred. “I don’t know how to do it myself and there isn’t any place around here where I can have it done.”

“That’s too bad; still it will make good eating.”

“After I’ve shown it to Pop,” grinned Fred.

“Here they come now!” exclaimed Grant, and as he spoke John and George appeared through the trees a short distance away.

“What luck did you have?” demanded John as he and his comrade approached the fire which Grant had started.

“Pretty good,” replied Grant. “I caught only one myself but Fred got eight.”

“Good for him,” exclaimed John. “Did you get any big ones?”

“Fred caught one beauty.”

“Let’s see it.”

Nothing loath Fred proudly produced his big trout and held it up for the inspection of his friends.

“Say,” exclaimed George, “that’s a good one all right!”

“He certainly put up a game fight too,” said Grant. “You should have seen it.”

“I wish we had,” said George. “None of the ones we caught gave us any trouble at all.”

“Perhaps you didn’t catch any big enough,” said Fred, preparing to tease George and remind him of his boasts. “How many did you get anyway?”

“Only four all together,” replied George. “String caught three of those.”

He and John seemed unwilling for some reason to talk very much and they had the appearance of holding something back. Perhaps if it had been lighter it would have been possible to see a guilty look on the faces of both boys.

“Let’s see your fish,” urged Fred. “Don’t be afraid of them. I’m surprised that you didn’t catch more than one, Pop. I expected that you’d bring in at least a dozen and that you’d surely get one bigger than mine; here you are with only four little ones between you. Bring them out anyway.”

John opened the creel and dipping his hand inside brought out a trout about ten inches long and laid it on the mossy bank.

“That’ll do for a start,” grinned Fred, who was thoroughly enjoying himself. He knew that he had made good his boast about catching a larger fish than George. He had been somewhat worried up to the present time for as Grant had said it was never possible to say just what George would do. Now, however, all doubts had been swept from his mind and he was perfectly confident that he had beaten his rival.

“There’s another,” said John, bringing out a second fish, if anything a trifle smaller than the first.

“Huh,” laughed Fred, “I’ll bet that’s the one Pop caught.”

“No, it isn’t,” said John. “I caught those two and this one too,” and he placed a third trout by the side of the other two. All three of them were almost exactly the same size.

“They’re not very large, are they?” said John dubiously.

“Oh, they’ll make fine eating,” exclaimed Fred. “Where’s your other fish though? I want to see the one that Pop caught.”

John once more put his hand in the creel and felt all around.

“I don’t feel it here,” he said anxiously.

“Maybe it slipped through a crack in the basket,” said Fred gleefully. “Are you sure you caught a fish, Pop?”

“Why, I thought so,” said George. “Here, String, let me try to find it.”

“Too bad we haven’t got a magnifying glass,” chuckled Fred as John passed the creel over to George. “You know it’s against the law to catch the little bits of ones anyway.”

“Find it, Pop?” inquired John.

“Here it is,” exclaimed George after a moment’s search and he drew forth to the astonished gaze of Grant and Fred a trout that one glance showed was easily larger than the one Fred had caught.

“Where’d you get that fish?” demanded Fred in amazement.

“I caught it.”

“You did? How’d you do it?”

“With a hook and line of course. I told you to ‘wait and see.’”

“Well,” gasped Fred, and he stopped for lack of anything further to say. His three companions, however, burst into gales of laughter all at his expense and all seemed to enjoy the situation very much.

“Let me see him,” demanded Fred, and George very willingly handed over his prize to be inspected.

“Why, look here,” exclaimed Fred. “There’s not a cut or a mark of any kind around his mouth but his stomach has a big gash in it.”

“Certainly,” said George. “That’s where I hooked him.”

“In the stomach?” cried Fred. “What are you talking about?”

“Tell him how you did it, Pop,” urged John gleefully.

“Well,” said George, “it was like this. I tried to fish the way I saw Fred doing it but I couldn’t to save my life. The old hook kept catching on everything in sight.”

“Just like mine,” interposed Grant.

“I finally got disgusted,” continued George. “It didn’t seem to be any use in my trying any longer and I thought that a trout would be an awful fool to bite that silly looking fly anyway. I’ve always fished with worms and I didn’t see why I couldn’t catch trout with worms for bait. I decided to try it anyway, so I rolled over an old log and dug under it with my knife. It wasn’t long before I had a couple of big fat fellows and I soon put one on the hook and took the fly off.

“Well, I fished with the worms for a while but nothing happened and I began to get pretty well discouraged. I quit fishing and lay down on my stomach to get a drink out of one of the pools. The water was just as clear as crystal and just as I lay down I saw a big old trout shoot under a big rock at the bottom of the pool. That proved there were trout in there anyway.

“The rock where he disappeared was right beneath me and I picked up my line with the big worm still on the hook and let it down just as quietly as I could until it was right in front of the rock. Nothing happened for a long time and I thought the trout was gone, but all of a sudden I saw him again.”

“Were you holding the line in your hand?” inquired Grant.

“Yes; it was just like a drop line. The rod was lying in back of me on the ground and all I had done was to let out a lot of line. Well, the old trout sort of poked his nose out and took a look around. He went up to the worm and took a smell of it; at least that’s the way it looked. He didn’t bite it though and a second later he went whizzing back underneath the rock again. I thought he was gone for good but in a few seconds back he came; the worm seemed to attract him even if he didn’t try to eat it. He kept hanging around it all the time, sort of sniffing at it first one side and then the other.

“All of a sudden I had an idea.”

“Whew,” whistled Fred softly.

“I decided,” continued George paying no attention to the interruption, “that I’d try to pull the line up all of a sudden and hook him in the stomach. I didn’t see why such a thing wasn’t possible and I meant to try it the first chance I had. Old Mr. Trout still hung around the worm but it seemed as if he was never going to get right over the hook. Finally he started to swim away slowly and I thought it was all over. He only went a few feet though and then turned back. The worm seemed to fascinate him.

“He went right up to the hook and sort of looked it over again; then he turned his back on it so to speak, and kept perfectly still, just wiggling his fins. I lowered the hook a little and he never moved. I lowered it a little more and held it there. All at once he turned leisurely around and came right square over the hook. I yanked the line with all my might and there he is.”

George pointed proudly to the big trout lying at his feet.

“That’s a great way to fish for trout,” exclaimed Fred in disgust.

“That’s all right, Pop,” laughed Grant. “You caught him anyway, didn’t you?”

“I surely did. I told Fred I’d beat him out and I did it. Why, Fred, you little shrimp, I’d have put salt on his tail and caught him that way if it was necessary in order to take some of the conceit out of you.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Fred in disgust.