ng
through the willows to join the main stream; and that, too, when not a
drop of water was running over the waste-way of the dam. He would have
noted also that this was unusually clear, cold water, like water from a
spring. There was, in fact, a copious spring at the foot of the bank
near the deep hole; and this hole was maintained by the spring, and not
by the water from above the dam.

Addison was a born observer, a naturalist by nature; and on one of these
hopeful trips to the mill-pond, he had searched out and found that
hidden hole on the old waste-way channel, below the dam. When he had
forced his way through the tangled mass of willows, alders and vines and
discovered the pool, he found eighteen or nineteen splendid speckled
trout in it.

Either these trout had come over the waste-way of the dam in time of
freshet, and had been unable to get out through the rick of small drift
stuff at the foot of the hole; or else perhaps they were trout that had
come in there as small fry and had been there for years, till they had
grown to their present size. Certain it is that they were now two-and
three-pound trout.

Did Addison come home in haste to tell us of his discovery? Not at all.
He did not even allow himself to catch one of the trout at that time,
for he knew that Halstead and I had seen him set off for the old
mill-pond. He came home without a fish, and remarked at the
dinner-table that it was of no use to fish for trout in that old
pond--which was true enough.

The next wet day, however, he said at breakfast to the Old Squire, "If
you don't want me, sir, for an hour or two this morning, I guess I'll go
down the Horr Brook and see if I can catch a few trout."

Gramp nodded, and we saw Addison dig his worms and set off. The Horr
Brook was on the west side of the farm, while the old mill-pond lay to
the southeast. What Addison did was to fish down the Horr Brook for
about a mile, to the meadows where the lake woods began. He then made a
rapid detour around through the woods to the Foy Brook, and caught four
trout out of the hidden preserve below the old dam. Afterwards he went
back as he had come to the Horr Brook, then strolled leisurely home with
eight pounds of trout.

Of course there was astonishment and questions. "You never caught those
trout in the Horr Brook!" Halstead exclaimed. But Addison only laughed.

"Ad, did you get those beauties out of the old mill-pond?" demanded
Ellen.

"No," said Addis