Drooping willows dipped their pendant branches in the stream that foamed and rippled over green, mossy stones. In a meadow that stretched fair and wide on either side of the water, innumerable grasshoppers were singing their song of summer. On a verdant bank reclined a man, whose advanced age might be indicated in his whitening locks, but whose bright eyes, and the quick, nervous movements as he leafed the pages of a small, green-covered book, made negative the first analysis. A little distance from him, where the sun beat down warmly, unhindered by any shade, lolled a colored man whose look now and then strayed to the reading figure.
A glance over the shoulder of the reader, were one so impolite as to take that liberty, would have disclosed, among others, this passage on the printed page:
“But yet you are to note, that as you see some willows or
palm trees bud and blossom sooner than others do, so some
trouts be, in rivers, sooner in season; and as some hollies
or oaks are longer before they cast their leaves, so are
some trouts in rivers longer before they go out of season.”
The gray-haired man closed the book, thereby revealing the title “Walton's Compleat Angler,” and looked across the stream. The sunlight flickered over its rippling surface, and now and then there was a splash in the otherwise quiet waters—a splash that to the reader was illuminating indeed.
“Shag!” he suddenly exclaimed, thereby galvanizing into life the somnolent negro.
“Yes, sah, Colonel! Yes, sah!” came the response.
“Hum! Asleep, weren't you?”
“Well, no, sah. Not zactly asleep, Colonel. I were jest takin' the fust of mah forty winks, an'—”
“Well, postpone the rest for this evening. I think I'll make some casts here. I don't expect any trout, my friend Walton to the contrary. Besides they're out of season now. But I may get something. Get me the rod, Shag!”
“Yes, sah, Colonel! Yes, sah!”
And while the fishing paraphernalia was being put in readiness by his colored servant, Colonel Robert Lee Ashley once more opened the little green book, as though to draw inspiration therefrom. And he read:
“Only thus much is necessary for you to know, and to be
mindful and careful of, that if the pike or perch do breed
in that river, they will be sure to bite first and must
first be taken. And for the most part they are very large.”
“Well, large or small, it doesn't much matter, so I catch some,” observed the colonel.
Then he carefully baited the hook, after he had taken the rod and line from Shag, who handled it as though it was a rare object of art; which, indeed, it was to his master.
“I think we shall go back with a fine mess of perch, Shag,” observed the fisherman.
“Yes, sah, Colonel, dat's what we will,” was the cheerful answer.
“And this time we won't, under any consideration, let anything interfere with our vacation, Shag.”
“No, sah, Colonel. No, sah!”
“If you see me buying a paper, Shag, mind, if you ever hear me asking if the last edition is out, stop me at once.”
“I will, Colonel.”
“And if any one tries to tell me of a murder mystery, of a big robbery, or of anything except where the fish are biting best, Shag, why, you just—”
“I'll jest natchully knock 'em down, Colonel! Dat's what I'll do!” exclaimed the colored man, as cheerfully as though he would relish such “Well, I can't advise that, of course,” said the colonel with a smile, “but you may use your own judgment. I came here for a rest, and I don't want to run into another diamond cross mystery, or anything like it.”
“No, sah, Colonel. But yo' suah did elucidate dat one most expeditious like. I nevah saw sech—”
“That will do now, Shag. I don't want to be reminded of it. I came here to fish, not to work, nor hold any post-mortems on past cases. Now for it!” and the elderly man cast in where a little eddy, under the grassy bank, indicated deep water, in which the perch or other fish might lurk this sunny day.
And yet, in spite of his determination not to recall the details of the diamond cross mystery to which Shag had alluded, Colonel Ashley could not help dwelling on one or two phases of what, with justifiable pride, he regarded as one of the most successful of his many cases.
Colonel Robert Lee Ashley was a detective by instinct and profession, though of late years he had endeavored, but with scant success, to turn the more routine matters of his profession over to his able assistants.
To those who have read of his masterly solution of the diamond cross mystery the colonel needs no introduction. He was a well known character in police and criminal circles, because of his success in catching many a slippery representative of the latter.
He had served in the secret service during the Spanish-American war, and later had become the head of the police department of a large Eastern city. From that he had built up a private business of his own that assumed large proportions, until advancing age and a desire to fish and reflect caused him virtually to retire from active work. And now, as he had so often done before, he had come to this quiet stream to angle.
And yet, even as he dropped his bait into the water, he could not keep his active mind from passing in rapid review over some of the events of his career—especially the late episode of the Darcy diamond cross.
“Well, I'm glad I helped out in that case,” mused the colonel, as he sat up more alertly, for there came a tremor to his line that told much to his practiced and sensitive hands.
A moment later the reel clicked its song of a strike, and the colonel got first to his knees and then to his feet as he prepared to play his fish.
“I've hooked one, Shag!” he called in a low but tense voice. “I've hooked one, and I think it's a beauty!”
“Yes, sah, Colonel! Yes, sah! Dat's fine! I'll be ready as soon as yo' is!”
Shag caught up a landing net, for, though the colonel was not anticipating any gamy fish in this quiet, country stream, yet for such as he caught he used such light tackle that a net was needed to bring even a humble perch to shore.
“I've got him, Shag! I've got him!” the colonel cried, as the fish broke water, a shimmering shower of sparkling drops falling from his sides. “I've got him, and it's a bass, too! I didn't think there were any here! I've got him!”
“Yes, sah, Colonel! Yo' suah has!” exclaimed the delighted George Washington Shag. “You suah has got a beauty!”
And as Shag started forward with the landing net, while the colonel was playing with the skill of long years of practice the fish which had developed unexpected fighting powers, there was a movement among the bushes that lined the stream below the willows, and a young man, showing every evidence of eagerness, advanced toward the fisherman. Shag saw him and called:
“Keep back! Keep back, sah, if yo' please! De Colonel, he's done got a bite, an'—”
“Bite! You mean that something's bitten him?” asked the young man, for he could not see the figure of the colonel, who, just then, in allowing the bass to have a run, had followed him up stream.
“No, he's catchin' a fish—he's got a strike—a big one! Don't isturb him.”
“But I must see him. I've come a long distance to—”
“Distance or closeness don't make no mattah of diffunce to de colonel when he's got a bite, sah! I'm sorry, but I can't let yo' go any closer, an' I'se got to go an' land de fish. Aftah dat, if you wants to hab a word wif de colonel, well, maybe he'll see yo', sah,” and Shag, with a warning gesture, like that of a traffic policeman halting a line of automobiles, started toward the colonel, who was still playing his fish.
Harry Bartlett, for he it was who had thus somewhat rudely interrupted the detective's fishing, stopped in the shade of the willows, somewhat chagrined. He had come a long way for a talk, and now to be thus held back by a colored man who seemed to have no idea of the importance of the mission was provoking.
But there was something authoritative in Shag's manner, and, being a business man, Harry Bartlett knew better than to make an inauspicious approach. It would be as bad as slicing his golf ball on the drive.
So he waited beside the silent stream, not so silent as it had been, for it was disturbed by the movements, up and down, of Colonel Ashley, who was playing his fish with consummate skill.
Seeing a little green book on the grass where it had fallen, Harry Bartlett picked it up. Idly opening the pages, he read:
“There is also a fish called a sticklebag, a fish without
scales, but he hath his body fenced with several prickles.
I know not where he dwells in winter, nor what he is good
for in summer, but only to make sport for boys and women
anglers, and to feed other fish that be fish of prey, as
trout in particular, who will bite at him as at a penk, and
better, if your hook be rightly baited with him; for he may
be so baited, as, his tail turning like a sail of a
windmill, will make him turn more quick than any penk or
minnow can.”
“I guess I've got the right man,” said Harry Bartlett with a smile.
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