stream.

An object of ceaseless curiosity to Brighteye was a water-shrew, not
more than half the size of the vole, that had come to dwell in the
pool, and had tunnelled out a burrow in the bank above the reed-bed.
Nightly, after supper, Brighteye made a circuit of the pool to find the
shrew, and with his companion swam hither and thither, till, startled by
some real or imagined danger, each of the playmates hurried to refuge,
and was lost awhile to the other amid the darkness and the solitude of
the silent hours.

Brighteye soon became aware of the fact that some of the habits of the
shrew were entirely different from his own. While the vole was almost
entirely a vegetable feeder, the shrew, diving to the bed of the river,
would thrust his long snout between the stones, and pick up grubs and
worms and leeches sheltering there. With Brighteye's curiosity was
mingled not a little wonderment, for the shrew's furry coat presented a
strange contrast of black above and white beneath, and, immediately
after the shrew had dived, a hundred little bubbles, adhering to the
ends of his hair, caused him to appear like a silvery grey phantom,
gliding gracefully, though erratically, from stone to stone, from patch
to patch of water-weed, from ripple to ripple near the surface of the
stream. The young brown trout, hovering harmlessly above the rocky
shelves and in the sandy shallows, far from being a source of terror to
Brighteye, fled at his approach, and seldom returned to their haunts
till he had reached the far side of the current. Emboldened by the
example of the shrew, that sometimes made a raid among the minnows, and
desirous of keeping all intruders away from the lower entrance to his
burrow, Brighteye habitually chased the trout if they ventured within
the little bay before his home. But there was one trout, old and lean,
whose haunt was behind a weed-covered stone at the throat of the pool,
and of this hook-beaked, carnivorous creature, by which he had once been
chased and bitten, Brighteye went in such constant fear that he avoided
the rapid, and, directly he caught a glimpse of the long, dark form
roving through the gloomy depths, paddled with utmost haste to his
nearest landing place.

Since, under the care of his mother, he made his earliest visit to the
reed-bed, Brighteye had seen hundreds of giant salmon; the restless
fish, however, did not stay long in the pool, but after a brief sojourn
passed upward. Often at du