When we came out on the Foy Brook
at a distance below the old dam, the dog ran directly up the stream
till he came to the place where the little rill from the hidden hole
joined it; then he scrambled in among the thick willows.

We were a little way behind, and knowing that the dog would soon come
out at the mill-pond, we climbed up the bank among the low pines on the
hither side of the brook.

Tyro was not a noisy dog, but a few moments after he entered the thicket
we heard him give one little bark, as if of joy.

"He's found him!" whispered Kate. "Let's keep still!"

Nothing happened for some minutes; then we saw Addison's head appear
among the brush, as if to look around. For some time he stood there,
still as a mouse, peering about and listening. Evidently he suspected
that some one was with the dog, most likely Thomas, and that he had gone
to the mill-pond to fish; but we were not more than fifty feet away,
lying up in the thick pine brush.

After looking and listening for a long while, Addison drew back into the
thicket, but soon reappeared with two large trout, and was hurrying away
down the brook when we all shouted, "Oho!"

Addison stopped, looking both sheepish and wrathful; but we pounced on
him, laughing so much that he was compelled to own up that he was
beaten. He showed us the hole--after we had crept into the thicket--and
the ledge where he had sat so many times to fish. "But there are only
four more big trout," he said. "I meant to leave them here, and put in
twenty smaller ones to grow up."

The girls thought it best to do so, and Halstead and I agreed to the
plan; but three or four days later, when Theodora, Ellen and Addison
went over to see the hole again, we found that the four large trout had
disappeared. We always suspected that Thomas caught them, or that he
told the Murch boys or Alfred Batchelder of the hole. Yet an otter may
possibly have found it. In May, two years afterward, Halstead and I
caught six very pretty half-pound trout there, but no one since has ever
found such a school of beauties as Addison discovered.

CHAPTER XXI

TOM'S FORT

During the next week there was what is termed by Congregationalists a
"Conference Meeting," at the town of Hebron, distant fifteen miles from
the Old Squire's. Gram and he made it a rule to attend these meetings;
and on this occasion they set off on Monday afternoon with old Sol and
the light driving wagon, in Sunday attire, and did n