down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh,
rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not
be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then
he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River,
where the saw-dust came to bother him.

He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at
the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and
drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies
and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four
seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,
quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute
with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish
ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones.
He liked flies better.

His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun
was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast
room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up
on every side to the rim of the high hills.

Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun
to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of
the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in
sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a
cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body,
and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap.
But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the
cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.

Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in
other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as
he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very
first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They
were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the
cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But
he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting
flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water,
others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and
challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the
cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the
pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told