Chapter II: Part 2

The men were Indians and half-breeds, and they were in high feather over their discovery. Around this pond there must be enough beaver-skins to keep them in groceries and tobacco and whiskey for a long time to come. But to find a city is one thing, and to get hold of its inhabitants is another and a very different one. One of the Indians was an elderly man who in the old days had trapped beaver in Canada for the Hudson Bay Company, and he assumed the direction of the work. First of all they chopped holes in the ice and drove a line of stakes across the stream just above the pond, so that no one might escape in that direction. Then, by pounding on the ice, and cutting more holes in it here and there, they found the entrances to all the lodges and most of the burrows, and closed them also with stakes driven into the bottom. Fortunately they did not find the burrow where our Beaver and his wife had taken refuge. They were about to break open the roofs of the lodges when the old man proposed that they should play a trick on one of the beaver families--a trick which his father had taught him when he was a boy, and when the beavers were many in the woods around Lake Superior. He described it with enthusiasm, and his companions agreed that it would be great fun. For a time there was much chopping of ice and driving of stakes, and then all was quiet again.

By and by one of our Beaver's children began to feel hungry, and as his father and mother had not come home he decided to go out to the wood-pile and get something to eat. So he took a header from his bed into the water, and swam down the angle. The door had been unbarred again, and he passed out without difficulty, but when he reached the pile he found it surrounded by a fence made of stakes set so close together that he could not pass between them. He swam clear around it, and at last found one gap just wide enough to admit his body. He passed in, and as he did so his back grazed a small twig which had been thrust down through a hole in the ice, and the watching Indians saw it move, and knew that a beaver had entered the trap. He picked out a nice stick of convenient size, and started to return to the lodge. But where was that gap in the fence? This was the place, he was sure. Here were two stakes between which he had certainly passed as he came in, but now another stood squarely between them, and the gate was barred. He swam all round the wood-pile, looking for a way out, and poking his little brown nose between the stakes, but there was no escape, and when he came back to the entrance and found it still closed his last hope died, and he gave up in despair. His heart and lungs and all his circulatory apparatus had been so designed by the Great Architect that he might live for many minutes under water, but they could not keep him alive indefinitely. Overhead was the ice, and all around was that cruel fence. Only a rod away was home, where his brothers and sisters were waiting for him, and where there was air to breathe and life to live--but he could not reach it. You have all read or heard how a drowning man feels, and I suppose it is much the same with a drowning beaver. They say it is an easy death.

By and by a hooked stick came down through a hole in the ice and drew him out, the gate was unbarred, the twig was replaced, and the Indians waited for another hungry little beaver to come for his dinner. That's enough. You know now what the parents found when they came home--or rather what they didn't find.

It would have taken too long to dispose of the whole city in this way, so the Indians finally broke the dam and let the water out of the pond, and then they tore open the lodges and all the burrows they could find, and the inhabitants were put to the--not the sword, but the axe and the club. Of all those who had been so happy and prosperous, the old Beaver and his wife were the only ones who escaped; and their lives were spared only because the Indians failed to find their hiding-place.

That was the end of the second city, but it was not quite the end of the beavers. A few miles up-stream they dug a short burrow in the bank and tried to make a new home. In May another baby came, but only one, and it was dead before it was born. Next day the mother died too, and the Beaver left the burrow and went out into the world alone. I really think his heart was broken, though it continued to beat for several months longer.

Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow pond, whose shores are very low and swampy, and whose waters drain into the larger lake through a short stream only a few rods in length. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago the narrow strip of land that separates them may possibly have been a beaver-dam, but to-day it is hard to tell it from one of Nature's own formations. In the course of his lonely wanderings the Beaver reached this pond, and here he established himself to spend his last few weeks. He was aging rapidly. Such a little while ago he had seemed in the very prime of life, and had been one of the handsomest beavers in the woods, with fur of the thickest and softest and silkiest, and a weight of probably sixty pounds. Now he was thin and lean, his hair was falling out, his teeth were losing their sharp edges and becoming blunt and almost useless, and even his flat tail was growing thicker and more rounded, and its whack was not as startling as of old when he brought it down with all his might on the surface of the water.

Yet even now the old instinct flamed up and burned feebly for a little while. Or shall we say the old love of work, and of using the powers and faculties that God had given him? Why should the thing that is called genius in a man be set down as instinct when we see it on a somewhat smaller scale in an animal? Whatever it was, the ruling passion was still strong. All his life he had been a civil engineer; and now, one dark, rainy autumn night, he left his shallow burrow, swam down the pond to its outlet, and began to build a dam. The next day, pushing up the shallow stream in my dug-out canoe, I saw the alder-cuttings lying in its bed, with the marks of his dull teeth on their butts. God knows why he did it, or what he was thinking about as he cut those bushes and dragged them into the water. I don't; but sometimes I wonder if a wild dream of a new lodge, a new mate, a new home, and a new city was flitting through his poor, befogged old brain.

It was only a few nights later that he put his foot into Charlie Roop's beaver-trap, jumped for deep water, and was drowned like his father before him. Charlie afterward showed me the pelt, which he had stretched on a hoop made of a little birch sapling. It was not a very good pelt, for, as I said, the Beaver had been losing his hair, but Charlie thought he might get a dollar or two for it. Whether he needed the dollar more than the Beaver needed his skin was a question which it seemed quite useless to discuss.

As we left the shack I noticed the tail lying on the ground just outside the door.

"Why don't you eat it?" I asked. "Don't you know that a beaver's tail is supposed to be one of the finest delicacies in the woods?"

"Huh!" said Charlie. "I'd rather have salt pork."

THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM

IT was winter, and the trout stream ran low in its banks, hidden from the sky by a thick shell of ice and snow, and not seeing the sun for a season. But the trout stream was used to that, and it slipped along in the darkness, undismayed and not one whit disheartened; talking to itself in low, murmuring tones, and dreaming of the time when spring would come back and all the rivers would be full.

Mingled with its waters, and borne onward and downward by the ceaseless flow of its current, went multitudes of the tiniest air-bubbles, most of them too small ever to be seen by a human eye, yet large enough to be the very breath of life to thousands and thousands of creatures. Some of them found their way to the gills of the brook trout, and some to the minnows, and the herrings, and the suckers, and the star-gazers; some fed the little crustacea, and the insect larvae, and the other tiny water animals that make up the lower classes of society; and some passed undetained down the river and out into Lake Superior. But there were others that worked down into the gravel of the riverbed; and there, in the nooks and crannies between the pebbles, they found a vast number of little balls of yellow-brown jelly, about as large as small peas, which seemed to be in need of their kindly ministrations. And the air-bubbles touched the trout eggs gently and lovingly, and in some mysterious and wonderful way their oxygen passed in through the pores of the shells, and the embryos within were quickened and stirred to a new vigor and a more rapid growth.

Not all of the eggs were alive. Some had been crushed between the stones; some were buried in sediment, which had choked the pores and kept away the friendly oxygen until they smothered; and some had never really lived at all. But one danger they had been spared, for there were no saw-mills on the stream to send a flood of fungus-breeding sawdust down with the current. And in spite of all the misfortunes and disasters to which trout eggs are liable, a goodly number of them were doing quite as well as could be expected. I suppose one could hardly say that they were being incubated, for, according to the dictionaries, to incubate is to sit upon, and certainly there was no one sitting on them. Their mothers had not come near them since the day they were laid. But the gravel hid them from the eyes of egg-eating fishes and musk-rats; the water kept them cold, but not too cold; the fresh oxygen came and encouraged them if ever they grew tired and dull, and so the good work went on.

Through each thin, leathery, semi-transparent shell you could have seen, if you had examined it closely, a pair of bright, beady eyes, and a dark little thread of a backbone that was always curled up like a horseshoe because there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But along the outside of the curve of each spinal column a set of the tiniest and daintiest muscles was getting ready for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together. And one day, late in the winter, when the woods were just beginning to think about spring, the muscles in one particular egg tugged with all their little might, the backbone straightened with a great effort, the shell was ripped open, and the tail of a brand-new brook trout thrust itself out into the water and wiggled pathetically.

But his head and shoulders were still inside, and for a while it looked as if he would never get them free. His tail was shaped somewhat like a paddle set on edge, for a long, narrow fin ran from the middle of his back clear around the end of it and forward again on the under side of his body, and with this for an oar he struggled and writhed and squirmed, and went bumping blindly about among the pebbles like a kitten with its head in the cream pitcher. And at last, with the most vigorous squirm and wriggle of all, he backed clear of the shell in which he had lain for so many weeks and months, and, weak and weary from his exertions, lay down on a stone to rest.

He had to lie on his side, for attached to his breast was a large, round, transparent sac which looked very much like the egg out of which he had just come. In fact it really was the egg, or at least a portion of it, for it held a large part of what had been the yolk. If you could have examined him with a microscope you would have seen a most strange and beautiful thing. His little body was so delicate and transparent that one could see the arteries pulsing and throbbing in time with the beating of his heart, and some of those arteries found their way into the food-sac, where they kept branching and dividing, and growing smaller and more numerous. And in the very smallest of the tiny tubes a wonderful process was going on--as wonderful as the way in which the oxygen fed the embryos through the shell. Somehow, by life's marvellous alchemy, the blood was laying hold of the material of the yolk, turning it into more blood, and carrying it away to be used in building up bone and muscle everywhere from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. You might not have detected the actual transformation, but you could have seen the beating of the engine, and the throbbing rush of the little red rivers, all toiling with might and main to make a big, strong trout out of this weak and diminutive baby. And you could have seen the corpuscles hurrying along so thick and fast that at times they blocked up the passages, and the current was checked till the heart could bring enough pressure to bear to burst the dam and send them rushing on again. For the corpuscles of a trout's blood are considerably larger than those of most fishes, and they sometimes get "hung up," like a drive of logs sent down a stream hardly large enough to float it.

With a full haversack to be drawn upon in such a convenient manner the Troutlet was not obliged to take food through his mouth or to think about hustling around in search of a living. This was very fortunate, for the stream was full of hungry beasts of prey who would be very likely to gobble him up quick the first time he went abroad; and, besides, his frail little body was still so weak and delicate that he could not bear the light of day. So, instead of swimming away to seek his fortune, he simply dived down deeper into the gravel, and stayed there. For some weeks he led a very quiet life among the pebbles, and the only mishap that befell him during that time was the direct result of his retiring disposition. In his anxiety to get as far away from the world as possible he one day wedged himself into a cranny so narrow that he couldn't get out again. He couldn't even breathe, for his gill-covers were squeezed down against the sides of his head as if he were in a vise. A trout's method of respiration is to open his mouth and fill it with water, and then to close it again and force the water out through his gills, between his cheeks and his shoulders, about where his neck would be if he had one. It's very simple when you once know how, but you can't do it with your gill-covers clamped down. His tail wiggled more pathetically than ever, and did its level best to pull him out, but without success. He was wedged in so tightly that he couldn't move, and he was fast smothering, like a baby that has rolled over on its face upon the pillow. But at the last moment, when his struggles had grown feebler and feebler until they had almost ceased, something stirred up the gravel around him and set him free. He never knew what did it. Perhaps a deer or a bear waded through the stream; or a saw-log may have grounded for a moment in the shallow; or possibly it was only the current, for by this time most of the snow had melted, and the little river was working night and day to carry the water out of the woods. But whatever it was, he was saved.

He stayed in the gravel nearly a month, but his yolk-sac was gradually shrinking, and after a time it drew itself up into a little cleft in his breast and almost disappeared. There was nothing left of it but a little amber-colored bead, and it could no longer supply food enough for his growing body. There were times when he felt decidedly hungry. And other changes had come while he lay and waited in the gravel. The embryonic fin which had made his tail so like a paddle was gone, the true dorsal and caudal and anal fins had taken their proper shape, and he looked a little less like a tadpole and a little more like a fish. He was stronger than he had been at first, and he was losing his dread of the sunlight; and so at last he left the gravel-bed, to seek his rightful place in the world of moving, murmuring waters.

He was rather weak and listless at first, and quite given to resting in the shallows and back water, and taking things as easily as possible. But that was to be expected for a time, and he was much better off than some of the other trout babies. He saw one that had two heads and only one body, and another with two heads and two bodies joined together at the tail. Still others there were who had never been strong enough to straighten their backbones, and who had lain in the egg till the shell wore thin and let them out head first, which is not at all the proper way for a trout to hatch. Even now they still retained the horseshoe curve, and could never swim straight ahead, but only spin round and round like whirligigs. These cripples and weaklings seemed to have got on pretty well as long as their food-sacs lasted, but now that they had to make their own living they were at a serious disadvantage. They all disappeared after a day or two, and our friend never saw them again. They couldn't stand the real struggle of life.

Many a strong, healthy baby disappeared at the same time, and if there had not been so many of them it is not likely that any would have survived the first few days and weeks. Even as it was, I doubt if more than one fish out of each thousand eggs ever lived to grow up. It is not difficult to guess where they went. Our Trout had hardly emerged from his hiding-place in the gravel when a queer, ugly, big-headed little fish darted at him from under a stone, with his jaws open and an awful cavity yawning behind them. The Troutlet dodged between a couple of pebbles and escaped, but another youngster just beyond him was caught and swallowed alive. That was his first meeting with the star-gazer, who kills more babies than ever Herod did. Then there were minnows, and herrings, and lizards, and frogs, and weasels, and water-snakes, and other butchers of all sorts and sizes, too numerous to mention. And perhaps the worst of all were the older trout, who never seemed to have the least compunction about eating their small relations, and who were so nimble and lively that it was almost impossible to keep out of their way. Our friend spent most of his time in the shallow water near the banks, where larger fishes were not so likely to follow him, but even there he had many narrow escapes and was obliged to keep himself hidden as much as possible under chips and dead leaves, and behind stones.

Often he found himself in great peril when he least suspected it. Once he lay for some time in the edge of a dark forest of water-weeds, only an inch from a lumpish, stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud, that was clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so dull and unintelligent that the young Trout paid little attention to him until another baby came up and approached a trifle closer. Then, quick as a flash, the creature shot out an arm nearly three-quarters of an inch long, bearing on its end two horrible things which were not exactly claws, nor fingers, nor teeth, but which partook of the nature of all three, and which came together on the infant's soft, helpless little body like a pair of tongs or the jaws of a steel trap, and drew him in to where the real jaws were waiting to make mince-meat of him. Our friend fled so precipitately that he did not see the end of the tragedy, but neither did he ever see that baby again. Before the summer had passed, the dull, lumpish-looking creature had become a magnificent insect, with long, gauzy wings, clad in glittering mail, and known to everybody as a dragon-fly, but I doubt if any of his performances in the upper air were ever half as dragon-like as the deeds of darkness that he did when he was an ugly, shapeless larva down under the water.

Fortunately, not all the larvae in the stream were thus to be feared. Many were so small that the Troutlet could eat them, instead of letting them eat him; and nowhere were they more plentiful than in this same forest of water-weeds. His first taste of food was a great experience, and gave him some entirely new ideas of life. One day he was lying with his head up-stream, as was his usual habit, when a particularly fat, plump little larva, torn from his home by the remorseless river, came drifting down with the current. He looked very tempting, and our friend sallied out from under a stick and caught him on the fly, just as he had seen the star-gazer catch his own brother. The funny little creature wriggled deliciously on his tongue, and he held him between his jaws for a moment in a kind of ecstasy; but he couldn't quite make up his mind to swallow him, and presently he spat him out again and went back to the shadow of his stick to rest and think about it. It was the first time in his life that he had ever done such a thing, and he felt rather overwhelmed, but an hour or two later he tried it again, and this time the living morsel did not stop in his mouth, but went straight on down.

It was really something more than a new experience--this first mouthful of food--for it marked a turning-point in his career. Up to this time he had lived entirely on the provisions which his parents had left him, but henceforth he was independent and could take care of himself. He was no longer an embryo; he was a real fish, a genuine _Salvelinus fontinalis_, as carnivorous as the biggest and fiercest of all his relations. The cleft in his breast might close up now, and the last remnant of his yolk-sac vanish forever. He was done with it. He had graduated from the nursery, and had found his place on the battle-field of life.

It must be admitted, however, that he did not look much like a mature trout, even now. He was less than three-quarters of an inch long, and his big head, bulging eyes, and capacious mouth were out of all proportion to his small and feeble body. But time and food were all that was needed to set these matters right; and now that he had learned how, he set to work and did his level best. I should be afraid to guess how many tiny water-creatures, insects and larvae and crustaceae, found their way down his throat, but it is pretty safe to say that he often ate more than his own weight in a single day. And so he grew in size and strength and symmetry, and from being a quiet, languid baby, always hiding in dark corners, and attending strictly to his own affairs, he became one of the liveliest and most inquisitive little fishes in all the stream. To a certain extent he developed a fondness for travelling, and in company with other troutlets of his own age and size he often journeyed from place to place in search of new surroundings and new things to eat. In fly-time he found a bountiful food-supply in the mosquitoes and black-flies that swarmed over the stream, and it was fun to see him leap from the water, catch one of them in his mouth, and drop back with a triumphant little splash. It wasn't really very considerate in him to prey on those biting, stinging flies, for in after years they would be his best defenders against anglers and fishermen, but consideration doesn't seem to be one of the strong points in a brook trout's character.

It would take too long to tell of all his youthful doings during the next year, and of all his narrow escapes, and the many tight places that he got into and out of. It was a wonder that he ever pulled through at all, but I suppose it is necessary that a few trout should grow up, for, if they didn't, who would there be to eat the little ones?

Once a kingfisher dived for him, missed him by a hair's-breadth, and flew back, scolding and chattering, to his perch on an old stub that leaned far out over the water. And once he had a horrible vision of an immense loon close behind him, with long neck stretched out, and huge bill just ready to make the fatal grab. He dodged and got away, but it frightened him about as badly as anything can frighten a creature with no more nerves than a fish. And many other such adventures he had--too many to enumerate. However, I don't think they ever troubled him very much except for the moment. He grew more wary, no doubt, but he didn't do much worrying. Somehow or other he always escaped by the skin of his teeth, and the next spring he was swallowing the new crop of young fry with as little concern as his older relations had shown in trying to swallow him. So far he seemed to be one of the few who are foreordained to eat and not be eaten, though it was more than likely that in the end he, too, would die a violent death.

When he was about a year and a half old he noticed that all the larger trout in the stream were gathering in places where the water was shallow, the bottom pebbly, and the current rapid; and that they acted as if they thought they had very important business on hand. He wanted to do as the others did, and so it happened that he went back again to the gravelly shallow where the air-bubbles had first found him. By this time he was about as large as your finger, or possibly a trifle larger, and he had all the bumptiousness of youth and was somewhat given to pushing himself in where he wasn't wanted.

The male trout were the first to arrive, and they promptly set to work to prepare nests for their mates, who were expected a little later. It was a simple process. All they did was to shove the gravel aside with their noses and fins and tails, and then fan the sediment away until they had made nice, clean little hollows in the bed of the stream; but there was a good deal of excitement and jealousy over it, and every little while they had to stop and have a scrap. The biggest and strongest always wanted the best places, and if they happened to take a fancy for a location occupied by a smaller and weaker fish, they drove him out without ceremony and took possession by right of the conqueror. For the most part their fighting seemed rather tame, for they did little more than butt each other in the ribs with their noses, but once in a while they really got their dander up and bit quite savagely. And when the lady trout came to inspect the nests that had been prepared for them, then times were livelier than ever, and the jealousy and rivalry ran very high, indeed.

Of course our Trout was too young to bear a very prominent part in these proceedings, but he and some companions of about his own age skirmished around the edges of the nesting grounds, and seemed to take a wicked delight in teasing the old males and running away just in time to escape punishment. And when the nests began to be put to practical use, the yearlings were very much in evidence. Strictly fresh eggs are as good eating down under the water as they are on land, and, partly on this account, and partly because direct sunshine is considered very injurious to them, the mothers always covered them with gravel as quickly as possible. But in spite of the best of care the current was constantly catching some of them and sweeping them away, and our young friend would creep up as near as he dared, and whenever one of the yellow-brown balls came his way he would gobble it down with as little remorse as he had felt for his first larva. Now and then an irate father would turn upon him fiercely and chase him off, but in a few minutes he would be back again, watching for eggs as eagerly as ever. Once, indeed, he had a rather close call, for the biggest old male in all the stream came after him with mouth open as if he would swallow him whole, as he could very easily have done. Our friend was almost caught when the big fellow happened to glance back and saw another trout coming to visit his wife, and promptly abandoned the chase and went home to see about it.

A year later our Trout went again to the gravelly shallow, and this time, being six inches long and about thirty months old, he decided to make a nest of his own. He did so, and had just induced a most beautiful young fish of the other sex to come and examine it, with a view to matrimony, when that same big bully appeared on the scene, promptly turned him out of house and home, and began courting the beautiful young creature himself. It was very exasperating, not to say humiliating, but it was the sort of thing that one must expect when one is only a two-year-old.

The next year he had better luck. As another summer passed away, and the cooler weather came on, he arrayed himself in his wedding finery, and it almost seemed as if he had stolen some of the colors of the swamp maples, in their gay fall dress, and was using them to deck himself out and make a brave display. In later years he was larger and heavier, but I don't think he was ever much handsomer than he was in that fourth autumn of his life. His back was a dark, dusky, olive-green, with mottlings that were still darker and duskier. His sides were lighter--in some places almost golden yellow; and scattered irregularly over them were the small, bright carmine spots that gave him one of his _aliases_, the "Speckled Trout." Beneath he was usually of a pale cream color, but now that he had put on his best clothes his vest was bright orange, and some of his fins were variegated with red and white, while others were a fiery yellow. He was covered all over with a suit of armor made of thousands and thousands of tiny scales, so small and fine that the eye could hardly separate them, and from the bony shoulder-girdle just behind his gills a raised line, dark and slightly waving, ran back to his tail, like the sheer-line of a ship. There were other fishes that were more slender and more finely modelled than he, and possibly more graceful, but in him there was something besides beauty--something that told of power and speed and doggedness. He was like a man-o'-war dressed out in all her bunting for some great gala occasion, but still showing her grim, heavy outlines beneath her decorations. His broad mouth opened clear back under his eyes, and was armed with rows of backward-pointing teeth, so sharp and strong that when they once fastened themselves upon a smaller fish they never let him go again. The only way out from between those jaws was down his throat. His eyes were large and bright, and were set well apart; and the bulge of his forehead between them hinted at more brains than are allotted to some of the people of the stream. Altogether, he was a most gallant and knightly little fish, and it would certainly have been a pity if he hadn't found a mate.

And now he started the third time for the gravelly shallow, and travelled as he had never travelled before in all his life. Streams are made to swim against--every brook trout knows that--and the faster they run, the greater is the joy of breasting them. The higher the water-fall, the prouder do you feel when you find you can leap it. And our friend was in a mood for swimming, and for swimming with all his might. Never had he felt so strong and vigorous and so full of life and energy, and he made his fins and his tail go like the oars of a racing-shell. Now he was working up the swift current of a long rapid like a bird in the teeth of the wind. Now he was gathering all his strength for the great leap to the top of the water-fall. And now, perhaps, he rested for a little while in a quiet pool, and presently went hurrying on again, diving under logs and fallen trees, swinging round the curves, darting up the still places where the water lay a-dreaming, and wriggling over shallow bars where it was not half deep enough to cover him; until at last he reached the old familiar place where so many generations of brook trout had first seen the light of day and felt the cold touch of the snow-water.

As before, he and the other males arrived at the nesting grounds some days in advance of their mates, and spent the intervening time in scooping hollows in the gravel and quarrelling among themselves. Two or three times he was driven from a choice location by someone who was bigger than he, but he always managed in some way to regain it, or else stole another from a smaller fish; and when the ladies finally appeared he had a fine large nest in a pleasant situation a little apart from those of his rivals. But for some reason the first candidates who came to look at it declined to stay. Perhaps they were not quite ready to settle down, or perhaps they were merely disposed to insist on the feminine privilege of changing their minds. But finally there came one who seemed to be quite satisfied, and with whom the Trout himself had every reason to be pleased.

She was not a native of the stream, but of one of the hatcheries of the Michigan Fish Commission; and while he was lying in the gravel she was one of a vast company inhabiting a number of black wooden troughs that stood in a large, pleasant room filled with the sound of running water. Here there were no yearlings nor musk-rats nor saw-bill ducks looking for fresh eggs, nor any dragons nor star-gazers lying in wait for the young fry. Instead there were nice, kind men, who kept the hatching troughs clean and the water at the right temperature, and who gently stirred up the troutlets with a long goose-feather whenever too many of them crowded together in one corner, trying to get away from the hateful light. Under this sort of treatment most of the thirty million babies in the hatchery lived and thrived. Only a few thousands of them were brook trout, but among those thousands one of the smartest and most precocious was the one in whom we are just now most interested. She was always first into the dark corners, as long as dark corners seemed desirable; and later, when they began to come up into the light and partake of the pulverized beef-liver which their attendants offered them, there was no better swimmer or more voracious feeder than she. All this was especially fortunate because there was a very hard and trying experience before her--one in which she would have need of all her strength and vitality, and in which her chances of life would be very small, indeed. It came with planting time, when she and a host of her companions were whisked through a rubber tube and deposited in a big can made of galvanized iron, in which they were borne away to the trout stream. The journey was a long one, they were pretty badly cramped for room, and before they reached their destination the supply of oxygen in the water became exhausted. The baby trout began to think they had blown out the gas, and they all crowded to the surface, where, if anywhere, the minute bubbles that keep one alive are to be found. They gulped down great mouthfuls of water and forced it out through their gills as fast as ever they could, but, somehow, all the life seemed to be gone out of it, and it did them no good whatever. Pretty soon a few turned over on their backs and died, and every last one of them would have suffocated if the man who had charge of the party hadn't noticed what was going on and come to the rescue. Picking up a dipperful of water and troutlets, and holding it high in the air, he poured it back into the can with much dashing and splashing. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny bubbles were caught in the rush and carried down to the bottom, and so the oxygen came back again to the tired gills, and the danger was over.

The emigrants reached the trout stream at last, and one would have supposed that their troubles were ended. In reality the chapter of trials and tribulations had only just begun, for the same fishes and frogs and lizards that had so persecuted our friend and his brothers and sisters were on hand to welcome the new arrivals, and very few escaped. And so, in spite of its quiet beginnings in the peaceful surroundings of the hatchery, this young lady trout's life proved quite as exciting and adventurous as our friend's, and it is possible that the good care which she received during her early infancy really served to make things all the harder for her when she came to be thrown entirely on her own resources. The mere change in the temperature of the water when she was turned out of the can was quite a shock to her nervous system; and, whereas most trout are somewhat acquainted with the dangers and hardships of the stream, almost from the time they rip their shells open, she did not even know that there was such a place until she was set down in it and told to shift for herself.

However, by dint of strength, speed, agility, and good judgment in selecting hiding-places--and also, in all probability, by a run of remarkably good luck--she made her way unharmed through all the perils of babyhood and early youth, and now she was one of the most beautiful little three-year-old pirates that ever swooped down upon a helpless victim.

As she and our friend swam side by side, her nose and the end of her tail were exactly even with his. Her colors were the same that he had worn before he put on his wedding garments, and if you had seen them together in the early summer I don't believe you could ever have told them apart. They were a well-matched pair, more evenly mated, probably, than is usual in fish marriages.

But they were not to be allowed to set up housekeeping together without fighting for the privilege. Hardly had she finished inspecting the nest, and made up her mind that it would answer, and that he was, on the whole, quite eligible as a husband, when a third trout appeared and attempted to do as the big bully had done the year before. This time, however, our young friend's blood was up, and, though the enemy was considerably larger than he, he was ready to strike for his altars and his fires. He made a quick rush, like a torpedo-boat attacking a man-of-war, and hit the intruder amidships, ramming him with all his might. Then the enemy made as sudden a turn, and gave our Trout a poke in the ribs, and for a few minutes they dodged back and forth, and round and round, and over and under each other, each getting in a punch whenever he had a chance. So far it seemed only a trial of strength and speed and dexterity, and if our Trout was not quite as large and powerful as the other, yet he proved himself the quicker and the more agile and lively. But before it was over he did more than that, for, suddenly ranging up on the enemy's starboard quarter, he opened his mouth, and the sharp teeth of his lower jaw tore a row of bright scales from his adversary's side, and left a long, deep gash behind. That settled it. The big fellow lit out as fast as he could go, and our Trout was left in undisputed possession.

The nesting season cannot last forever, and by and by, when the days were very short and the nights were very long, when the stars were bright, and when each sunrise found the hoar-frost lying thick and heavy on the dead and fallen leaves, the last trout went in search of better feeding grounds, and again the gravelly shallow seemed deserted. But it was only seeming. There were no eggs in sight--the frogs, the rats, the ducks, and the yearlings had taken care of that, and I am very much afraid that our friend may have eaten a few himself, on the sly, when his wife wasn't looking--but hidden away among the pebbles there were thousands, and the old, old miracle was being re-enacted, and multitudes of little live creatures were getting ready for the time when something should tell them to tear their shells open and come out into the world.

One of the Trout's most remarkable adventures, and the one which probably taught him more than any other, came during the hot weather of the following summer. The stream had grown rather too warm for comfort, and lately he had got into the habit of frequenting certain deep, quiet pools where icy springs bubbled out of the banks and imparted a very grateful coolness to the slow current. It was delightful to spend a long July afternoon in the wash below one of these fountains, having a lazy, pleasant time, and enjoying the touch of the cold water as it went sliding along his body from nose to tail. One sunshiny day, as he lay in his favorite spring-hole, thinking about nothing in particular, and just working his fins enough to keep from drifting down stream, a fly lit on the surface just over his head--a bright, gayly colored fly of a species which was entirely new to him, but which looked as if it must be very finely flavored. As it happened, there had been several days of very warm, sultry weather, and even the fish had grown sullen and lazy, but this afternoon the wind had whipped around to the north, straight off Lake Superior, and all the animals in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp felt as if they had been made over new. How the brook trout could have known of it so quickly, down under the water, is a mystery; but our friend seemed to wake up all of a sudden, and to realize that he hadn't been eating as much as usual, and that he was hungry. He made a dash at the fly and seized it, but he had no sooner got it between his lips than he spat it out again. There was something wrong with it. Instead of being soft and juicy and luscious, as all flies ought to be, it was stiff, and dry, and hard, and it had a long, crooked stinger that was different from anything belonging to any other fly that he had ever tasted. It disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and the Trout sank back to the bottom of the pool.

But presently three more flies came down together, and lit in a row, one behind another. They were different from the first, and he decided to try again. He chose the foremost of the three, and found it quite as ill-tasting as the other had been; but this time he didn't spit it out, for the stinger was a little too quick for him, and before he could let go it was fast in his lip. For the next few minutes he tore around the pool as if he was crazy, frightening some of the smaller fishes almost out of their wits, and sending them rushing up-stream in a panic. He himself had more than once been badly scared by seeing other trout do just what he was doing, but he had never realized what it all meant. Now he understood.

The first thing he did was to go shooting along the surface for several feet, throwing his head from side to side as he went, and doing his best to shake that horrible fly out of his mouth. But it wouldn't shake, so he tried jumping out of the water and striking at the line with his tail. That wasn't any better, and next he rushed off up the stream as hard as he could go. But the line kept pulling him round to the left with gentle but irresistible force, and before he knew it he was back in the pool again. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, it was always pulling, pulling, pulling--not hard enough to tear the hook away, but just enough to keep him from getting an inch of slack. If there had been any chance to jerk he would probably have got loose in short order. He rushed around the pool so hard that he soon grew weary, and presently he sank to the bottom, hoping to lie still for a few minutes, and rest, and perhaps think of some new way of escape. But even there that steady tugging never ceased. It seemed as if it would pull his jaw out of his head if he didn't yield, and before long he let himself be drawn up again to the surface. Once he was so close to the shore that the angler made a thrust at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side. It frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away again so fast that the reel sang, and the line swished through the water like a knife.

The other two flies were trailing behind, and the short line that held them was constantly catching on his fins and twisting itself around his tail in a way that annoyed him greatly. He almost thought he could get away if they were not there to hinder him. And yet, as it finally turned out, it was one of those flies that saved his life. He was coming slowly back from that last unsuccessful rush for liberty, fighting for every inch, and only yielding to a strength a thousand times greater than his own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank, until the hook came away and he was free.

It was a painful experience, and he carried the scar as long as he lived, but the lesson he learned was worth all it cost. I won't say that he never touched bait again, but he was much more cautious, and no other artificial fly ever stung him as badly as that one.

The years went by, and the Trout increased in size and strength and wisdom, as a trout should. One after another his rivals went away to the happy hunting-grounds, most of them losing their lives because they could not resist the temptation to taste a made-up fly, or to swallow a luscious angle-worm festooned on a dainty little steel hook; and the number of fish who dared dispute his right to do whatever he pleased grew beautifully less. And at last there was only one trout left in all the stream who was larger and stronger than he. That was the same big fellow who had come so near swallowing him on the occasion of his first visit to the nesting-grounds; and the way the fierce, solemn old brute finally departed this life deserves a paragraph all to itself.

It happened one morning in early spring, just after the ice had gone out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and lazy after the long, dull winter, though he had an eye open, as always, for anything particularly good to eat. I doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not believe in eating them out of season; but almost anything else was welcome. He was faring very well that morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running high, and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been swept into it by the melting snow. And presently, what should come drifting down with the current but a poor little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain effort to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had swallowed a mouse whole, just as you would take an oyster from the half-shell, and he knew that they were very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky little animal, and in another second he would have had him; but just then the big bully came swaggering up with an air which seemed to say: "That's my meat. You get out of this!"

Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized the mouse, and then--his time had come. He fought bravely, but he was fairly hooked, and in a few minutes he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath, flopping wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand and dirt. If he had understood English he might have overheard an argument which immediately took place between the angler and a girl, and which began something like this:

"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice aren't good bait? This is the biggest trout that's been caught in this stream for years."

"Oh, George, don't kill him! He's so pretty! Put him back in the water."

"Put him back in the water? Well, I should say not! What do you take me for?"