were
royal fare. His wide jaws and capacious gullet were big enough to
accommodate a cousin a full third of his own size, if swallowed
properly, head first. His speed was so great that any smaller fish
which he pursued was doomed, unless fortunate enough to be within
instant reach of shoal water. Of course, it must not be imagined that
the great trout was able to keep his domain quite inviolate. When he
was full fed, or sulking, then the finny wanderers passed up and down
freely,--always, however, giving wide berth to the lair under the
bank. In the bright shallows over against the other shore, the
scurrying shoals of pin-fish played safely in the sun. Once in a long
while a fish would pass, up or down, so big that the master of the
pool was willing to let him go unchallenged. And sometimes a muskrat,
swimming with powerful strokes of his hind legs, his tiny forepaws
gathered childishly under his chin, would take his way over the pool
to the meadow of the blue flag-flowers. The master of the pool would
turn up a fierce eye, and watch the swimmer's progress breaking the
golden surface into long, parabolic ripples; but he was too wise to
court a trial of the muskrat's long, chisel-like teeth.

[Illustration: "THEY MIGHT BE--AND MORE OFTEN WERE--KITH AND KIN OF
HIS OWN."]

There were two occasions, never to be effaced from his sluggish
memory, on which the master of the pool had been temporarily routed
from his mastership and driven in a panic from his domain. Of these
the less important had seemed to him by far the more appalling.

Once, on a summer noonday, when the pool was all of a quiver with
golden light, and he lay with slow-waving fins close to the coldest
up-gushing of the spring which cooled his lair, the shining roof of
his realm had been shattered and upheaved with a tremendous splash. A
long, whitish body, many times his own length, had plunged in and
dived almost to the bottom. This creature swam with wide-sprawling
limbs, like a frog, beating the water, and leaping, and uttering
strange sounds; and the disturbance of its antics was a very
cataclysm to the utmost corners of the pool. The trout had not stayed
to investigate the horrifying phenomenon, but had darted madly
down-stream for half a mile, through fall and eddy, rapid and shallow,
to pause at last, with throbbing sides and panting gills, in a little
black pool behind a tree root. Not till hours after the man had
finished his bath, and put on his