ame to exercise a more and more autocratic sway over the smaller
fry. For in spite of his age he was still growing. A trout has an
advantage over a land animal in this, that he is not obliged to use any
of his food as fuel for keeping himself warm. He can't keep warm
anyhow--not as long as he lives in the water--and so he doesn't try, but
devotes everything he eats to enlarging his body and repairing wear and
tear. If nothing happens to put a stop to the process, he seems to be
able to keep it up almost indefinitely. But the size of the stream in
which he lives appears to limit him to a certain extent. Probably the
largest trout stream in the world is the Nepigon, and they say that
seventeen-pounders were caught there in the early days. Our friend's
native river was a rather small one. In the course of time, however, he
attained a weight of very nearly three pounds, and I doubt if he would
ever have been much larger. Perhaps it was fitting that his reign should
end there.

But it seems a great pity that it could not have ended in a more
imposing manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am
almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and
over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and
his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen
better than any other trout in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a
victim to a little Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse
string for a line, and salt pork for bait.

I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if he had stayed at home; but one
spring he took it into his head to go on an exploring expedition out
into Lake Superior. I understand that his cousins in the streams of
eastern Canada sometimes visit salt water in somewhat the same manner,
and that they thereupon lose the bright trimmings of their coats and
become a plain silver-gray. Superior did not affect our friend in that
way, but something worse happened to him--he lost his common-sense.
Perhaps his interest in his new surroundings was so great that he forgot
the lessons of wisdom and experience which it had cost him so much to
learn.

In the course of his wanderings he came to where a school of perch were
loafing in the shadow of a wharf; and just as he pushed his way in among
them, that little white piece of fat pork sank slowly down through the
green water. It was something new to the trout; he didn't quite know
what to make of it. B