rashness.

What a day that was! He has not gone far before, alongside the alders in the swift water, almost at his feet, he captures a larger trout than any ever granted him by the pasture-lot. He cuts a stringer from the over-hanging alders, and with fish in one hand and pole in the other proceeds on his adventurous way. For some time he steals along the gravelly bed of the brook, eagerly expectant but without getting even a bite. Certainly this is not very exciting, and his gaze begins to wander to the woods. Is that crinkle-root? Investigation yields a plentiful supply of the peppery plant and also three or four ground-nuts. Then the brook pulls him back to itself and a few rods farther on he comes to a log across the stream and partly under water. His heart gives a thump, for this must be the place where Edwin Crumb caught his big trout. It exactly fits the oft-repeated description. He leaves the bed of the brook, fetches a circuit through the brush and comes out just where he can drop his hook by the upper side of the log in the still water. The answer to his invitation is prompt, but the captive is not as large as was anticipated. Again and yet again he returns his lure only to meet a cordial reception, until five fair-sized trout have been added to the alder stringer; then activities cease.

We cannot follow him all through his eventful pilgrimage, but there is one experience that must not go unrecorded. In a tangle of brush formed by a tree-top which has fallen into a deep place in the stream he spies an open space, possibly eighteen inches in diameter, where the water is covered with scum and foam. Just the place for a big trout, but there is no way of getting even his short pole through the brush. The line is untied, and he goes crawling out on a limb that hangs over the brook, and sits, at last, astride it and directly above the enticing spot. A fresh and exceedingly fat angleworm is looped upon the hook and the wriggling mass is cautiously dropped into the middle of the scum. It has no sooner touched the water than there is a sharp tug and a mighty swirl, but only the hook and the remainders of the worm come back in answer to his pull. Another bait, and again the hook is lowered into the pool. No, the old fellow was not pricked the first time, for here he is again and this time firmly hooked. To balance the body on the limb when both hands are employed in tugging on the line, is no easy task, but at last the trout is in his hands and hugged to his breast. With the fingers of one hand through his gills and the thumb among the sharp teeth of the fish's mouth, the slow journey is made back to the shore. Glory enough for one day! The prize measures about twelve inches and is thick through. Edwin Crumb's trout is beaten with room to spare.

But now it dawns upon the boy that he has been gone a long time, and if he hopes to be permitted to repeat this trip he must hurry home. He also becomes acutely conscious of an awful vacuum in the region of his stomach which even crinkle-root and ground-nuts will not fill. He reasons with himself that he can reach home more quickly by striking through the woods to the road than by retracing his way along the brook. He is very sure that he knows the way, but his certitude evaporates steadily as he plunges his way through the woods. Just when he admits to himself that he has no idea in which direction the road lies, he emerges into a clearing and sees before him a group of farm buildings. They are certainly unfamiliar; but some one must live here and he can get directions as to his shortest way home. Who is that in the doorway? It cannot be Mrs. Woodman whose home is only a short half-mile from his own? But it is, and, to make his joy complete, this is baking-day and the good woman hands him out an apple turnover. All turnovers are good, but that one was far and away the best ever baked. A hungry boy and an apple turnover form a great combination.

It would not do to say that the boy and the brook were inseparable companions, for there were long months when the Frost King had everything his own way and the merry stream found it hard work to maintain its appearance even on the shallow riffles. Then there were swift flights down the hillsides for the boy, and long journeys up again dragging his sled. Often in the long winter nights he heard the half-smothered gurgle of the near-by brook, and wondered where the trout lived when the thermometer was below zero.

Even in the summer days the two friends could not be together all the time. A mile or so over the hill was the brown school-house to which the boy must make his pilgrimages five days each week for three months at a time, and where he learned, helped by the pictures, that three cherries and two cherries make five cherries, and wrestled more or less successfully with the multiplication table. The old meadow just above the orchard was a famous place for strawberries, and many hours the boy spent in gathering the luscious fruit while the bobolinks, perched on swaying mullein stalks or the old rail-fence, engaged in a vocal contest of riotous and maudlin song. Then a robin had built its nest on one of the big beams under the meetinghouse shed on the top of the hill, and the eggs must needs be watched and the young birds looked after. Sometimes the children strayed into the burial ground adjoining the church and pushed aside the myrtle to read on the little head-stone the name of a child that had died long, long ago.

If anything could make the boy forget the brook it was his dog. Very likely the dog had a pedigree, but it had not been recorded, and he was as dear to the heart of the child as if his ancestors had all been decorated with blue ribbons. Pedro and the lad knew where the woodchucks lived on the side of the hill above the pond, and it was a red-letter day when one of them was cut off from his hole by the two hunters and Pedro vanquished him in a pitched battle.

The brook has run through the years and its laughter sounds now in the ears of the writer. Somehow he hopes that the River of Life will be like the brook, larger grown. And ever as its murmur is heard a vision of the mother is seen.

The two grew into the boy's heart together. In the last days when that mother had grown weary and was waiting for rest, the son sat by her bedside and they talked together of the long past days, of the home under the hill, of friends gone on into the silence, and of the brook with its sun-painted trout. She has been sleeping for many years on the banks of the Susquehanna, lulled by the ceaseless flow of the noble river with whose waters the waters of the brook are mingled.

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Here is a story of something that was shown me when I was a little boy. Every time I think of this story it seems to me more and more charming. For it is with some stories as it is with many people—they become better as they grow older.... And that something which was told me when I was a child, you shall hear too, and learn that whatever an old man does, is generally right.—Hans Christian Andersen, The Wife Perfect.

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