JAFFRAY BROWN was fishing the

Dead Diamond, with results so far a little discouraging. It was a fascinating stream to fish. A flat, wild valley between two dark ranges was its bed, over which the amber water meandered lazily, now looping from slope to slope, now returning on its course in U's and S's upon the floor of the forest. At each sharp turn a little spit of white sand ran out from the alders, and beyond each spit, at the elbow of the curve, was a dark, still pool, in the shadows of which trout lurked, and flashed now and then at a white miller on the surface.

But only the little fellows rose to Jaffray's flies, and they took hold with such a doubtful grip that only three or four times the line had tightened at the strike, and a fish come swinging and plunging

into the net. In between the sand-spits it was alder-swamp and cedar-tangle. Hot, sweaty, his face atickle with the brush of leaves, and smarting with their sting, he was pushing through irritably, jerking his rod, when the line caught, and kicking at the tussocks that wound about his feet, "Let go, you dirty parasite, you!" he hissed at a brier that snarled around his arm; and "Confound you," he snapped at a larch that prodded his chin. When he burst from the woods and slid panting on a sloping rock above the water, his nerves were all aquiver.

"I've got to calm down," he thought. "The doctor said 'no excitement,' and here I am as stirred up as if it were election day."

Plucking a few wisps of leaves from the reel, he examined his leader. The second

fly had snapped off in the last encounter with the brush. He put on another ruefully.

"The trouble with me," he soliloquized, "is that I don't get the right wrist motion. Jim took twenty from this stretch yesterday. I guess what they say about my politics applies to my fishing. I don't know the game." His mind ran back to the fight for city betterment. "I might have known old Calkins would balk when it came to draining his marshes. What does he care if his workmen get the malaria! He thinks malaria is a gift of God."

A white moth eddied past his head, settled upon the noiseless current, was swirled into rough water below, and disappeared in a little curl of foam. "Any old bug catches them," he murmured, "except my flies." Stepping carefully behind the alders on the sand-spit, he peered through their branches down upon a pool full of black spruce shadows, and overhung by a steep and mossy bank. A frog sprang from the rushes beneath him, plumped into the pool, and swam manfully across its shadowed surface. A flash from the bottom, a rising shape, a broad and curving shoulder, and with an echoing splash he disappeared.

dars of the farther bank. He heard soft footfalls and the creak of bending boughs. "A deer," he thought, and stepped behind. the alder screen. A cedar at the pool end waved violently, and through the thick brush around it a gaitered foot came wriggling blindly, felt firm earth, and was followed by a khaki leg, a hunting-jacket, and a red and sweaty face. As the foot descended, another frog leaped from its impact, cut through. the pool, and was swallowed in an even mightier splash. Face, body, and foot withdrew quickly into the herbage.

After an instant a hairy hand came pawing slowly through the leaves, hovered a moment, then descended with weep. In its fingers, as it rose, a frog sprawled limply. There was a tense pause; then out from above the cedars a light line swung the frog in a curve which ended

"A monster," Jaffray whispered tremulously, and cast his flies across the dimpling surface. A flash, a tug! He struck at empty water. Again he cast, and let the hooks sink till the ripples died away. As he drew in the line, a shape followed it slowly, then whisked back into darkness. "That ends it," said Jaffray, mournfully. "He's too keen for me. A big, obvious bullfrog he swallows without looking; but when I play fair, and use a fly so as to give him a chance, I don't get even the opportunity of losing him. I wish I had some dynamite." He sat down beneath the alders and mopped his brows. "Now, if I'd only let the ditching go to the city-hall crowd, they 'd have taken. that bait. But principles, civic honesty, public good! They looked at them and went back home, like that trout."

Something was moving through the ce

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Pa-light ended line 1915

over the black depths of the pool. A moARY

ment's skittering on the surface, a swirl, a whip of the tautened line, then the bushes burst, and the fisherman with bent rod and whining reel sprang knee-deep into the open water.

"You 've got him!" Jaffray yelled, and ran down on his sand-spit.

"I 've got him," the other said calmly, playing his fish up and down through the wavering shadows. Twice it made for the rapids below, and was snubbed; once. it fought its way to the stumps and root arms of the overhanging banks; then it sulked till Jaffray dislodged it with a stone; and at last, rolling and feebly darting, came home to the net. "He's safe," cried the fisherman.

Jaffray stepped upon a tussock to get a better view.

"Yes, he's a beauty," he said a little coldly. "But-"

The fisherman smiled as he dropped the fish into his basket. "But you wish you 'd done the catching. Say, were n't you here first? I thought I heard somebody." Jaffray blushed.

"I got him to rise, but I could n't hook him," he murmured. "I'm using flies," he added politely.

His politeness was wasted.

"So would I, so would I," said the stranger, "if they 'd bite 'em. But that fellow wanted a frog, and I gave him one. Say, rub your hands around under that tussock and I'll bet you 'll find a big fellow. Put your hook through his lips and let him sink about a foot. You 're sure to get a fish from that bit up ahead there. They are n't taking flies to-day."

Jaffray hesitated.

“I—I don't use bait for trout," he said with some embarrassment. "I like to get them on flies or not at all."

The hairy man on the other bank leaned his rod against a cedar and sat down on a flat rock.

"Say, that's interesting," he said. "What's your idea? I 've heard of fellows that feel that way about fishing, but I never ran into one before. Have a cigar? I guess I can throw it across. What you got against bait?"

Jaffray was painfully aware of the mere handful of trout in his creel. He caught the cigar, lit it, and sought refuge in similies.

"Why, it's like golf or any other game," he answered, puffing. "A game's got to have its rules in order to be a game, has n't it? In golf you don't pick your ball out of a hole, do you? You hit it out; that is, if you play fair. And you don't take any muddy little worm or bug -or frog that comes along, and feed your trout; you tempt him with something that is n't like his food, that he has to be cajoled into taking. That is," he ended somewhat pedantically, "you make rules for your game, and then you follow them."

The hairy man stretched out on his rock. "But look here, mister, it's trout you 're after, ain't it? Well, suppose they don't want your flies; you lose your fish, don't you? Don't you, now?"

Jaffray grew heated.

"But I don't want my fish if I can't catch him according to the rules of the game." He waved his cigar toward the water. "Why not dynamite your old pool, and be done with it? That's where your logic leads."

The man on the other side chuckled.

"N-no, not in practical politics," he an swered a little bitterly.

"Well, politics," his neighbor commented, "ain't so very different from fishing." He picked the big fish from the basket and ran his fingers over its smooth skin caressingly. "Ain't he a beauty? But what I don't see is, why not give the fish what they want, instead of what you think is good for 'em?" He glanced quizzically across the shadowed water, and rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

"It's overcoming difficulties that makes a game good sport," said Jaffray, thoughtfully. "I have to choose my flies to suit varying conditions. I have to cast just right. I have to strike as the fish rises. It's better to catch a fish that waywhen he 's had his chance-than to lug him in with a piece of meat. It's better sport."

"My idea of sport is getting fish," said his opponent, doggedly.

Jaffray lost his temper.

"Nonsense!" he cried. "You could buy your fish for half what it costs you to come here. It's the game that you come for, and playing fair and keeping to rules is what makes the game. If you can't see the moral side, at least you can see there's more fun in my method. It's more fun to catch trout in a hard way than in an easy way, is n't it? And it's the fun that you are after. You 're like"-he gesticu

lated for a comparison-"you 're like a fellow in my home town who has been in on every piece of graft as long as I can remember. Licked me last month, but that 's not why I'm mentioning him. He's got plenty of money. He's in politics just for the fun of the thing. But what he gets is not fun, but more money. Now, if he were a real sport, he 'd fight on the other side."

The hairy man glanced at him keenly. "Whad d' ye mean-'other side'?" he asked. "I don't see the fun in gettin' licked."

Jaffray forgot about fishing.

"I'll show you," he said expansively. "A crowd of us started in last year to clean up the marshes in our town. We got statistics to prove that if we could get rid of mosquitos, the city would save. enough in increased value of real estate to pay the cost five times over. Well, things were coming our way. All we needed was a few more votes in the board of aldermen so as to be able to condemn a strip of marsh belonging to a tight-wad old manufacturer who would n't drain his lands. If we had won there, we would

have gone after the railroad, which owns. more marsh than all the rest put together, and got them, too-cleaned up the whole town, and increased the health rate ten per cent. Well, in steps Donergan. 'What do I get out of it?' he asks. 'A good town to live in,' the boys tell him. 'I said, what do I get out of it?' he answers, and slaps his pockets.

"When I heard about it, I decided to ram the statistics into the aldermien's thick heads, and let Donergan go hang. Well, sir, before I got to the city hall, he had bought every man jack of the doubtful ones-contracts, law business, coal orders, that sort of thing you know. The vote went dead against us, and that 's the end of the mosquito campaign."

"Licked you, did he?" the fisherman commented. "Well, mebbe that was what he wanted." He chuckled.

"It certainly was n't money he was after," Jaffray acknowledged. "But anyway you look at it, he made a mistake."

"No friend of mine," cried Jaffray, warmly. "I've never seen him, though I know him by reputation well enough. But I'll bet he does, and catches his meat in two minutes when he might have had an hour's fun trying to hook a trout. You 're like him."

"I guess I am," the hairy man remarked reflectively. "I guess I am, though I' never thought of it that way before." He swung on his creel, and threw his cigar into the rapids. "But just the same, if the trout won't bite on flies, why even a 'real sport' has to use a frog ain't he? Say, if you 'd only tried bait on them aldermen-the job of suing the railroad for instance!" Before Jaffray could answer, "Well, so long," he called, and pushed into the forest cover.

Jaffray disentangled his rod from the alders, and moved on in the opposite direction. The stream visibly curved to the right below the next rapids.

"He 's stirred up every pool for a quarter of a mile with his confounded bait. I'll cut across the bend," he thought. "I wonder who the old chap is. Looks like a corporation president, talks like a policeman. Gad! I wish I'd gotten that trout!"

Leaving the stream-side, he stepped back into the tangled jungle. Myriads of gnats