One claw of the crayfish projected
beyond his black jaw; and, being thus comfortably occupied, he turned
an indifferent eye upon the frightened swimming of a small green frog,
which had just then fallen in and disturbed the sheen of his amber
roof.

Very early one morning, when all his world was of a silvery gray, and
over the glassy pallor of his roof thin gleams of pink were mingled
with ghostly, swirling mist-shadows, a strange fly touched the
surface, directly above him. It had a slender, scarlet, curving body,
with long hairs of yellow and black about its neck, and brown and
white wings. It fell upon the water with the daintiest possible
splash, just enough to catch his attention. Being utterly unlike
anything he had ever seen before, it aroused his interest, and he
slanted slowly upward. A moment later a second fly touched the water,
a light gray, mottled thing, with a yellow body, and pink and green
hairs fringing its neck. This, too, was strange to him. He rolled a
foot higher, not with any immediate idea of trying them, but under his
usual vague impulse to investigate everything pertaining to his pool.
Just then the mist-swirls lifted slightly, and the light grew
stronger, and against the smooth surface he detected a fine, almost
invisible, thread leading from the head of each fly. With a derisive
flirt of his tail he sank back to the bottom of his lair. Right well
he knew the significance of that fine thread.

The strange flies skipped lightly over the surface of the pool, in a
manner that to most trout would have seemed very alluring. They moved
away toward a phenomenon which he just now noticed for the first time,
a pair of dark, pillar-like objects standing where the water was about
two feet deep, over toward the further shore. These dark objects moved
a little, gently. Then the strange flies disappeared. A moment later
they dropped again, and went through the same performance. This was
repeated several times, the big trout watching with interest mingled
with contempt. There was no peril for him in such gauds.

Presently the flies disappeared for good. A few minutes later two
others came in their place,--one a tiny, white, moth-like thing, the
other a big, bristling bunch of crimson hairs. The latter stirred,
far back in his dull memory, an association of pain and fear, and he
backed deeper into his watery den. It was a red hackle; and in his
early days, when he was about eight inches long and frequente