a live current stirred
among the gravel. To be sure the beetles were there, and the hungry
young trout; but he had learned the ways of both these species of foe
and knew pretty well how to elude them. Meanwhile, as he was himself
continually busy catching and devouring the tiny forms of life which
abounded in those fruitful waters,--minute shell-fish, and the spawn of
the water-snails that clung under the stones, gnats, and other small
insects that fell on the water, and even other fry just from the
egg,--he was growing at such a rate that presently the fierce
water-beetles and the baby trout ceased to have any terrors for him. And
at last, turning savagely as one of his old tormentors passed by, he
caught a small beetle between his jaws and proceeded to make a meal of
him. A few days later one of the baby trout was too slow in getting out
of his way. He made a rush, caught his former tyrant, and, though the
latter was more than an inch long, found no difficulty in swallowing him
head first.

By this time the little salmon was between two and three inches long. He
was what those learned in matters pertaining to the salmon would have
called a "parr". His colouring was very beautiful, in a higher key than
the colouring of a trout, and more brilliant, if less showy. There was
none of the pink of the trout, but a clear silvery tone on sides and
belly, with a shining blue-black along the back. The sides were marked
with a row of black dots, set far apart and accentuated by a yellow
flush around them, and with another row of spots of most vivid scarlet.
Along the sides also ran a series of broad, vertical, bluish gray bars,
the badge of the young of all the salmon tribe. He was a slender,
strong-finned, finely moulded little fish, built to have his dwelling in
swift currents and to conquer turbulent rapids. His jaws were strong and
large, and he had no reason to fear anything of his size that swam the
river.

There were now not more than two score of his brothers and sisters left
alive, and these scattered far and wide over the shoaling stream. It was
high summer in the Quahdavic country, and the Great South Branch was
beginning to show its ledges and sandy bars above water. Deep green the
full-leaved boughs of elm and ash, poplar and cedar leaned above the
current; and along the little wild-meadows which here and there bordered
the stream, where the lumbermen had had camps or "landings", the misty
pink-purple blossoms of t