tion of the house on the hill, Farmer Ellison,
himself, appear in the doorway and gaze out over his fields and stream.

Had one been nearer, he might have seen a look of grim satisfaction,
that was almost a smile, steal over the man's face as he saw the grass,
grown thick and heavy; grains coming in well filled; garden patches
showing thrift; cattle feeding in pasture lands, and the brook winding
prettily down through green fields and woodland.

But the expression upon Farmer Ellison's face changed, as he gazed; his
brow wrinkled into a frown. His eyes flashed angrily.

What was that, moving to and fro amid the alder clumps by the border of
the trout pool? There was no breeze stirring the alders; but one single
alder stick--was not it waving back and forth most mysteriously?

Farmer Ellison gave an exclamation of anger. He knew these early morning
poachers. This would not be the first he had chased before sunrise,
taking a fish from the forbidden waters. He stepped back into the entry,
seized a stout cane, and started forth down through the fields, bending
low and screening himself as he progressed by whatsoever trees and
bushes were along the way.

That someone was there, whipping the stream, there could be no doubt.
Yet, someone--whoever it was--must be short, or else, perchance,
crouched low in the undergrowth; for Farmer Ellison could get no glimpse
of the fisherman.

Crack! A dead branch snapped under Farmer Ellison's heavy boot.

Bess Thornton, gleeful,--joyous over the conquest of her third trout,
looked quickly behind her, startled by the snapping of the branch only a
few rods away. What she saw made her gasp. She almost cried out with the
sudden fright. But she acted promptly.

Giving the pole a sharp thrust, she shoved it in under the bank, beneath
the water. The trout! The precious trout! Ah, she could not leave them.
Hastily she snatched them up, and thrust all three inside her gingham
waist, dropping them in with a wrench at the neck-band.

"Ugh! how they squirm," she cried, softly.

Then, creeping to the water's edge, she dived in--neatly as any trout
could have done it--and disappeared. One who did not know Bess Thornton
might well have been alarmed now, for the child seemed to be lost. The
surface of the brook where she had gone down remained unruffled. Then,
clear across on the other side, one watching sharply might have seen a
child's head appear out of the pool, at the edge of a clump of
bu