es upon them, and here and there a ghostly sycamore, stretching its
slender bole into the air, edged the course of the river.

Hiram viewed the scene with growing delight. His eyes sparkled and
a smile came to his lips as he crossed, with springy steps, the open
meadow on which the grass was already showing green in patches.

Between the line of the wood they had left and the breadth of the meadow
was a narrow, marshy strip into which a few stones had been cast, and on
these they crossed dry shod. The remainder of the bottom-land was firm.

"Ain't this jest a scrumptious place?" demanded Henry, and Hiram agreed.

At the river's edge they parted the bushes and looked down upon the
oily-flowing brown flood. It was some thirty feet broad and with the
melting of the snows in the mountains was so deep that no sign was
apparent here of the rocks which covered its bed.

Henry led the way up the bank of the stream toward a huge sycamore that
leaned lovingly over the water. An ancient wild grape vine, its
butt four inches through and its roots fairly in the water, had a
strangle-hold upon this decrepit forest monarch, its tendrils reaching
the sycamore's topmost branch.

Under the tree was a deep hole where flotsam leaves and twigs performed
an endless treadmill dance in the grasp of the eddy.

Suddenly, while their gaze clung to the dimpling water, there was a
flash of a bronze body--a streak of light along the surface of the
pool--and two widening circles showed where the master of the hole had
leaped for some insect prey.

"See him?" called Henry, but under his breath.

Hiram nodded, but squeezed his companion's hand for silence. He almost
held his own breath for the moment, as they moved back from the pool
with the soundless step of an Indian.

"That big feller is my meat," declared Henry.

"Go to it, boy!" urged Hiram, and set about preparing the camp.

He cut with his big jack-knife and set up a tripod of green rods in a
jiffy, skirmished for dry wood, lit his fire, filled the kettle from the
river at a little distance from the eddy, and hung it over the blaze to
boil.

Meanwhile Henry fished out a line and an envelope of hooks from an inner
pocket, cut a springy pole back on the hillside, rigged his line and
hook, and kicked a hole in the soft, rich soil until he unearthed a fat
angleworm.

With this impaled upon the hook he cautiously approached the pool under
the sycamore and cast gently. The struggling