e his objective; a hole opened; the morsel tumbled
in, and Tookhees was gone with his prize.

I placed more crumbs from my pocket in the same place, and presently
three or four mice were nibbling them. One sat up close by the dead
brake, holding a bit of bread in his forepaws like a squirrel. The brake
stirred suddenly; before he could jump my hand closed over him, and
slipping the other hand beneath him I held him up to my face to watch
him between my fingers. He made no movement to escape, but only trembled
violently. His legs seemed too weak to support his weight now; he lay
down; his eyes closed. One convulsive twitch and he was dead--dead of
fright in a hand which had not harmed him.

It was at this colony, whose members were all strangers to me, that I
learned in a peculiar way of the visiting habits of wood mice, and at
the same time another lesson that I shall not soon forget. For several
days I had been trying every legitimate way in vain to catch a big
trout, a monster of his kind, that lived in an eddy behind a rock up at
the inlet. Trout were scarce in that lake, and in summer the big fish
are always lazy and hard to catch. I was trout hungry most of the time,
for the fish that I caught were small, and few and far between. Several
times, however, when casting from the shore at the inlet for small fish,
I had seen swirls in a great eddy near the farther shore, which told me
plainly of big fish beneath; and one day, when a huge trout rolled half
his length out of water behind my fly, small fry lost all their interest
and I promised myself the joy of feeling my rod bend and tingle beneath
the rush of that big trout if it took all summer.

Flies were no use. I offered him a bookful, every variety of shape and
color, at dawn and dusk, without tempting him. I tried grubs, which bass
like, and a frog's leg, which no pickerel can resist, and little frogs,
such as big trout hunt among the lily pads in the twilight,--all without
pleasing him. And then waterbeetles, and a red squirrel's tail-tip,
which makes the best hackle in the world, and kicking grasshoppers, and
a silver spoon with a wicked "gang" of hooks, which I detest and which,
I am thankful to remember, the trout detested also. They lay there in
their big cool eddy, lazily taking what food the stream brought down to
them, giving no heed to frauds of any kind.

Then I caught a red-fin in the stream above, hooked it securely, laid it
on a big chip, coiled m