reaking greensward in the south field that afternoon
with Addison and Halse driving the team which consisted of a yoke of
oxen and two yokes of steers, the latter not as yet very well "broken"
to work. My inexperienced services were not required; but to keep me out
of hurtful idleness, the old gentleman bade me pick up four heaps of
stones on a stubble field near the east pasture wall. It was a kind of
work which I did not enjoy very well, and I therefore set about it with
a will to get it done as soon as possible.

I had nearly completed the fourth not very large stone pile, when I
heard one of the girls calling me from down in the pasture, below the
field. It was Ellen. She came hurriedly up nearer the wall. "Run to the
house and get Addison's fish-hook and line and something for bait!" she
exclaimed. "For there is the greatest lot of trout over at the Foy
mill-pond you ever saw! There's more than fifty of them. Such great
ones!"

"Why, how came you to go over there?" said I; for the Foy mill-pond was
fully a mile distant, in a lonely place where formerly a saw-mill had
stood, and where an old stone dam still held back a pond of perhaps four
acres in extent. The ruins of the mill with several broken wheels and
other gear were lying on the ledges below the dam; and two curiously
gnarled trees overhung the bed of the hollow-gurgling stream. Alders had
now grown up around the pond; and there were said to be some very large
water snakes living in the chinks of the old dam. It was one of those
ponds the shores of which are much infested by dragon-flies, or "devil's
darn-needles," as they are called by country boys,--the legend being
that with their long stiff bodies, used as darning needles, they have a
mission, to sew up the mouths of those who tell falsehoods.

"Oh, Kate wanted to go," replied Ellen. "We went by the old logging road
through the woods from the cedar swamp. She thought we would see a
turtle on that sand bank across from the old dam, if we sat down quietly
and waited awhile. The turtles sometimes come out on that sand bank to
sun themselves, she said. So we went over and sat down, very still, in
the little path at the top of the dam wall. The sun shone down into the
water. We could see the bottom of the pond for a long way out. Kate was
watching the sand bank: and so was I; but after a minute or two,
Theodora whispered, 'Only see those big fish!' Then we looked down into
the water and saw them, great love