ll-rushes; might have seen her emerge half out of water, and hide
herself from view of anyone on the opposite shore.

She had swum the entire width of the pool under water.

From her hiding-place she saw Farmer Ellison rush suddenly from cover
upon the very place where she had sat, fishing. She saw him run,
furiously, hither and thither, beating the underbrush with his cane,
shaking the stick wrathfully. His face showed the keenest disappointment
and chagrin.

Up and down the shore of the pool he travelled, searching every clump
that might afford shelter.

"Well," he exclaimed finally, "I must be going wrong, somehow. First
it's the mill I hear, when it isn't grinding, and now I see somebody
fishing when there isn't anybody. I'll go and take some of them burdock
bitters. Guess my liver must be out of order."

Farmer Ellison, shaking his head dubiously, and casting a backward
glance now and then, strode up the hill, looking puzzled and wrathful.

When he was a safe distance out of the way, a little figure, dripping
wet, scrambled in across the bog on the other side, and stole up
through the fields to the old tumble-down house.

"What's that you're cooking, child?" called out a voice, some time
later, as the girl stood by the kitchen stove.

"M-m-m-m gran', it's something awful good. Do you smell 'em?" replied
the child, gazing proudly into the fry-pan, wherein the three fat trout
sizzled. "Well, I caught 'em, myself."

"I do declare!" exclaimed Grannie Thornton. "I didn't know the trout
would bite now anywhere but in Jim Ellison's pool."

The girl made no reply.

"You like 'em, don't you, gran'?" she said, gleefully, some moments
later, as she stood watching the old woman eat her breakfast with a
relish. Grannie Thornton had eaten one trout, and was beginning on the
half of another.

"They're tasty, Bess," she replied. "Where did you catch 'em? I thought
the fishing in the brook wasn't any use nowadays."

The girl stood for a moment, hesitating. Then she thought of the old
woman's words of the night before.

"I caught 'em in the pool, gran'," she said.

The iron fork with which Grannie Thornton was conveying a piece of the
trout to her mouth dropped from her hand. The last piece she had eaten
seemed to choke her. Then she tottered to her feet with a wrench that
made her groan.

"You got 'em from the pool!" she screamed. "From the pool, do you say?
Don't yer know that's stealing? Didn't I bring you up