been
made foolishness. Some swimming frog, some terrified, hurrying mouse,
or some great night-moth flopping down upon the dim water of a
moonless night, would have lulled his suspicions and concealed the
inescapable barb; and the master of the pool would have gone to swell
the record of an ingenious conqueror. He would have been stuffed, and
mounted, and hung upon the walls of the club-house, down at the mouth
of the Clearwater. But it pleased the secret and inscrutable deities
of the woods that the end of the lordly trout should come in another
fashion.

It is an unusual thing, an unfortunate and pitiful thing, when death
comes to the wild kindred by the long-drawn, tragic way of
overripeness. When the powers begin to fail, the powers which enabled
them to conquer, or to flee from, or to outwit their innumerable
foes,--then life becomes a miserable thing for them. But that is not
for long. Fate meets them in the forest trails or the flowing
water-paths; and they have grown too dull to see, too heavy to flee,
too indifferent to contend. So they are spared the anguish of slow,
uncomprehending decrepitude.

But to the master of Golden Pool Fate came while he was yet master
unchallenged, and balked the hopes of many crafty fishermen. It came
in a manner not unworthy of the great trout's dignity and fame, giving
him over to swell no adversary's triumph, betraying him to no
contemptible foe.

One crisp autumn morning, when leaves were falling all over the
surface of the pool, and insects were few, and a fresh tang in the
water was making him active and hungry, the big trout was swimming
hither and thither about his domain instead of lying lazily in his
deep lair. He chanced to be over in the shallows near the grassy
shore, when he saw, at the upper end of the pool, a long, dark body
slip noiselessly into the water. It was not unlike the mink in form,
but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its
forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail,
twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed,
combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish.
The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay
quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the bright eyes of the
stranger.

But the stranger, as it happened, was hunting, and the stranger was an
otter. The big trout was just such quarry as he sought, and his bright
eyes, peering restl