r
to endure a strain, he stooped suddenly downward, deep into the
yellow gloom, and began wrenching with all his force at those oozy
curves, striving to drag them apart. They gave a little, but not
enough to release the imprisoned foot. Another moment, and he had to
lift his head again for breath.

After some minutes of rest, he repeated the choking struggle, but, as
before, in vain. He could move the jaws of the trap just enough to
encourage him a little, but not enough to gain his release. Again and
again he tried it, again and again to fail just as he imagined himself
on the verge of success; till at last he was forced, for the moment,
to acknowledge defeat, finding himself so exhausted that he could
hardly keep his mouth above water. Drawing down a stiffish branch of
the sapling, he gripped it between his teeth and so held himself
upright while he rested his arms. This was a relief to nerves as well
as muscles, because it made his balance, on which he depended for the
chance to breathe, so much the less precarious.

As he hung there pondering, held but a bare half-inch above
drowning, the desperateness of the situation presented itself to him
in appalling clearness. How sunny and warm and safe, to his
woods-familiar eyes, looked the green forest world about him. No
sound broke the mild tranquillity of the solitude, except, now and
then, an elfish gurgle of the slow current, or the sweetly cheerful
_tsic-a-dee-dee_ of an unseen chicadee, or, from the intense blue
overhead, the abrupt, thin whistle of a soaring fish-hawk. To Barnes
it all seemed such a safe, friendly world, his well-understood
intimate since small boyhood. Yet here it was, apparently, turned
smooth traitor at last, and about to destroy him as pitilessly as
might the most scorching desert or blizzard-scourged ice-field. A
silent rage burned suddenly through all his veins--which was well,
since the cold of that spring-fed river had already begun to finger
stealthily about his heart. A delicate little pale-blue butterfly,
like a periwinkle-petal come to life, fluttered over Barnes's grim,
upturned face, and went dancing gaily out across the shining water,
joyous in the sun. In its dancing it chanced to dip a hair's-breadth
too low. The treacherous, bright surface caught it, held it; and
away it swept, struggling in helpless consternation against this
unexpected doom. Before it passed out of Barnes's vision a great trout
rose and gulped it down. Its sw