full of salmon.

All at once the old sailor indulged in a burst of chuckles.

"Hear something, Bill?" said Nic.

"No, my lad, not yet; I was on'y thinking. They was going to bring a
cart up the road yonder, waren't they?"

"Yes; one of the men said so," replied Nic.

"Well, we're a-going to give 'em something to take back in that cart
to-night, my lad," whispered the man, with another chuckle; "and it
won't be fish, nor it won't be fowl. My fingers is a-tingling so that I
thought something was the matter, and I tried to change my stick from my
right hand into my left."

"Well, what of that?" said Nic contemptuously; "it was only pins and
needles."

"Nay, Master Nic, it waren't that. I've been a sailor in the king's
ships and have had it before. It was the fighting-stuff running down to
the very tips of my fingers, and they wouldn't let go."

"Hush! don't talk now," whispered Nic; "there may be one or two of the
enemy yonder."

"Nay, it's a bit too soon for 'em, sir; but it'll be as well to keep
quiet."

The narrow paths of the tangled wilderness at the back of the pool were
so well known to all present that their young leader had no difficulty
in getting them stationed by twos and threes well down the sides of the
gorge on shelves and ledges where the bushes and ferns grew thickly,
from whence, when the poachers were well at work, it would be easy to
spring down into the water and make the attack. For the flood had so
far subsided now that the worst hole was not above five feet deep, and
the greater part about three, with a fairly even bottom of ground-down
rock smoothed by the pebbles washed over it in flood-time.

Here it was that the salmon for the most part congregated, the
new-comers from the sea taking naturally to the haunts of their
forerunners from time immemorial, so that poacher or honest fisher
pretty well knew where he would be most successful.

Nic chose a central spot for himself and Solly, some four feet above the
level of the black water, and after ranging his men to right and left he
sat down to wait, with all silent and dark around, save for the murmur
of the water and the gleaming of a star or two overhead, for besides
this there was not a glint of light. Still, the place seemed to stand
out before him. Exactly opposite, across the pool, was the narrow
opening between the steep rocks on either side; and he knew without
telling that as soon as the poachers began their work his f