ad been my gun, you
wouldn't have shown yourselves."

This was addressed to a little flock of small green birds which flew
whistling and chattering more than chirping up the slope toward the
level land above.

"I dare say those are the little green parrots Leather talked about."

Twice more he had capital chances to obtain specimens,--one being at
some half-dozen birds, which seemed to be all pink except their snowy
heads; the next time at a couple more in a tree. These did not fly till
he was close enough to see that they were bright with bronze and green
and red.

"Why, they must be pigeons," he said, as they darted off. "Well, I
suppose one may see birds of any colour now."

At last!

He had reached an ideal spot, where one side of the river was dammed by
a tangled mass of tree trunks which must have been brought down by some
flood, to get jammed, and then gradually be stripped by the action of
the water, till only the stems and larger branches were left; while on
his side there was a dark, tempting-looking pool of water, which he
approached cautiously, after laying down his rod, and then crawling
toward it, gradually looked over the sharp, rocky edge of the river into
the sunlit depths, to see dark bodies in slow motion some feet below
sailing here and there to capture the tit-bits brought down by the
stream.

Nic's eyes glistened as he drew back as cautiously as he had approached.

"This looks like real fishing," he said to himself, as he thought of the
unsatisfactory sport he had had at home at the various ponds in the
neighbourhood of the Friary, when a farmer gave them leave to go.
"Wouldn't some of the boys like to be here. I shouldn't be surprised if
this place has never been fished before. My word! they ought to bite."

Such uneducated fish certainly ought to have bitten; but though Nic
approached the side again cautiously, keeping well back out of sight,
and after carefully covering his hook with a worm, dropped it without a
splash in a likely place, and then in a more likely one, and again and
again into other spots which seemed each of them more likely than the
last, not a bite did he get!

He was patient, too. He put on fresh baits, tried all over the pool,
dropped in his worm so that it might be washed from the stream into the
still, dark water, and sink among the fish.

Still there was not the sign of a bite.

"They must all have gone away," thought Nic, just as there was a burst
of