an turned and walked
slowly down the hill, carrying the lamb. The ewe followed, crowding as
close to him as she could, and stumbling as she went because her eyes
were fixed upon her little one.

The ram hesitated. He looked at the hillside, the woods, and the sky
beginning to grow chill with the onrush of twilight. Then he looked
at the retreating figures. Suddenly he saw his world growing empty and
desolate. With an anxious bleat he trotted after the ewe, and took his
docile place a few feet behind the man's heels. The man glanced over
his shoulders, and a smile of pleasure softened his rugged face. In a
few moments the little procession disappeared in the woods, moving
toward the settlement, and Ringwaak Hill was left solitary in the
dusk, with the lonely notes of the night-hawks twanging over it.

The Master of Golden Pool

One shore of the pool was a spacious sweeping curve of the sward,
dotted with clumps of blue flag-flowers. From the green fringes of
this shore the bottom sloped away softly over a sand so deep and
glowing in its hue of orange-yellow as to give the pool the rich name
by which it was known for miles up and down the hurrying Clearwater.
The other shore was a high, overhanging bank, from whose top drooped a
varied leafage of birch, ash, poplar, and hemlock. Under this bank the
water was deep and dark, a translucent black with trembling streaks
and glints of amber. Fifty yards up-stream a low fall roared
musically; but before reaching the fresh tranquillity of the pool, the
current bore no signs of its disturbance save a few softly whirling
foam clusters. Light airs, perfumed with birch and balsam and warm
scents of the sun-steeped sward, drew over the pool from time to time,
wrinkling and clouding its glassy surface. Birds flew over it,
catching the small flies to whom its sheen was a ceaseless lure. And
huge dragon-flies, with long, iridescent bodies and great jewelled,
sinister eyes, danced and darted above it.

The cool black depths under the bank retained their coolness through
the fiercest heats of summer, because just here the brook was joined
by the waters of an icy spring stealing down through a crevice of the
rocks; and here in the deepest recess, exacting toll of all the varied
life that passed his domain, the master of Golden Pool made his home.

For several years the great trout had held his post in the pool,
defying every lure of the crafty fisherman. The Clearwater was a
p