ends. On these Bobby was not allowed to
venture.

"How deep is it here?" he asked again.

"Bout thirty feet," replied Jimmy Powers.

Bobby for an instant felt a little dizzy, as though he were on a high
building. All this fabric on which he moved suddenly seemed to him
unreal, like a vast cobweb in suspension through a void. It was a brief
sensation, and little defined in his childish mind, so it soon passed,
but it constituted while it lasted a definite subjective experience
which Bobby would always remember. As he looked back, the buildings of
the river camp, lying low among the trees, had receded to a great
distance; apparently at another horizon was the dark row of piling that
marked the outer confines of the booms; up and down stream, as far as he
could see, were the logs. Bobby suddenly felt very much alone, with the
blue sky above him, and the deep black water beneath, and about him
nothing but the quiet sullen monsters herded from the wilderness. He
gripped very tightly Jimmy Powers's hand as they walked along.

But shortly they turned to the left; and after a brief walk, mounted the
rickety steps to the floor of the hut where dwelt old man North, and the
winch for operating the swinging boom. Old man North was short, dark,
heavy and bearded; he smoked perpetually a small black clay pipe which
he always held upside down in his mouth. His conversation was not
extensive; but his black eyes twinkled at Bobby, so the little boy was
not afraid of him. When he saw the two approaching, he reached over in
the corner and handed out a hickory pole peeled to a beautiful white.

"The wums is yonder," said he.

Bobby put a fat worm on his hook and sat down in the opposite doorway
were he could dangle his feet directly over the river. Where the shadow
of the cabin fell, he could see far down in the water, which there
became a transparent fair green. Close to the piles, on the tops of
which the hut was built, were various fish. Jimmy leaned over.

"Mostly suckers," he advised. "Yan's a perch, try him."

Bobby cautiously lowered his baited hook until it dangled before the
perch's nose. The latter paid absolutely no attention to it. Bobby
jiggled it up and down. No results. At last he fairly plumped the worm
on top of the fish's nose. The perch, with an air of annoyance, spread
his gills and, with the least perceptible movement of his tail, sank
slowly until he faded from sight.

"Better let down your hook and fish nea