essly on every side, left no corner of the pool
uninvestigated. They caught sight of the master's silver and vermilion
sides, his softly waving, gay-coloured fins.

With a dart like that of the swiftest of fish, the stranger shot
across the pool. The trout darted madly toward his lair. The otter was
close upon him, missing him by a fin's breadth. Frantic now with
terror, the trout shot up-stream toward the broken water. But the
otter, driven not only by his forefeet but by that great combined
propeller of his hind legs and tail, working like a screw, swam
faster. Just at the edge of the broken water he overtook his prey. A
set of long, white teeth went through the trout's backbone. There was
one convulsive twist, and the gay-coloured fins lay still, the silver
and vermilion body hung limp from the captor's jaws.

For many days thereafter, Golden Pool lay empty under its dropping
crimson and purple leaves, its slow sailing foam flakes. Then, by twos
and threes, small trout strayed in, and found the new region a good
place to inhabit. When, in the following spring, the fishermen came
back to the Clearwater, they reported the pool swarming with pan-fish,
hardly big enough to make it worth while throwing a fly. Then word
went up and down the Clearwater that the master of the pool was gone,
and the glory of the pool, for that generation of fishermen, went with
him.

[Illustration: "HE WOULD SIT BACK AND WHINE FOR HIS MOTHER."]

The Return to the Trails

Down from the rocky den under the bald peak of Sugar Loaf, the old
black bear led her cub. Turning her head every moment to see that he
was close at her heels, she encouraged him with soft, half-whining,
half-grunting sounds, that would have been ridiculous in so huge a
beast had they been addressed to anything less obviously a baby than
this small, velvet-dark, wondering-eyed cub.

Very carefully the old bear chose her path, and very slowly she moved.
But for all her care, she had to stop every minute or two, and
sometimes even turn back a few paces, for the cub was continually
dropping behind. His big, inquiring ears took in all the vague, small
noises of the mountainside, puzzling over them. His sharp little nose
went poking in every direction, sniffing the strange new smells, till
he would get bewildered, and forget which foot to put forward first.
Then he would sit back and whine for his mother.

It was the cub's first adventure, this journey down the wor