as they were
termed, he was fortunate enough, or wary enough, to detect when he first
entered the river, and he avoided them by keeping to the deepest parts
of the channel; but he saw what cruel toll they took of the eager and
heedless schools that swam with him. Net after net they threatened him;
but ever upward he urged his way against the tawny current, his long
fins and powerful tail never pausing in their graceful, tireless effort.
Neither he nor his companions now lost time in foraging, for their
appetite had mysteriously vanished since leaving the salt water. They
had become engrossed in one idea, the quest of the clean-rushing rapids
and the beds of bright gravel where they were born.

Leagues up the great river, after mounting several noisy but not
difficult rapids, the grilse came to a halt for the first time in a deep
and spacious pool which swarmed with his fellows. Here he rested, and
here he made light, casual meals, jumping at the little flies which fell
upon the swirling surface of the pool. Once the bright yellow body of a
struggling wasp allured him,--but just as he was rising to gulp it in, a
memory, vague but terrifying, swung dimly up into his brain from the
far-off days when he had been a tiny, gay-coloured parr in the ripples
of the Great South Branch. He remembered the sharp point piercing his
jaw, his choking and gasping on the hot, dry bank; and refusing the
bright titbit, he left it to be gobbled up by one of his less wary
companions. After that revival of memory the crafty grilse inspected
every fly before he rose to it, to see if any slender, almost invisible
line were attached to it. His precautions were unnecessary, in that
instance, the pool being a lonely and unnoted one in a broad, shallow
reach of the river; but his awakened watchfulness was to stand him in
good stead later on.

A day's journey beyond the pool, a great outrush of colder water,
green-white against the amber tide of the main river, greeted the
returning grilse, and he found himself in the mouth of his native
Quahdavic. It was a scanter and shallower stream, however, than when he
left it, for now the long heats of the summer had shrunken all the
watercourses. As he mounted the clear current he now encountered fierce
rapids, and ledges boiling with foam, which put his swimming prowess to
the test. After a day of these rapids and ledges and shallow rips, he
felt quite ready to halt once more in a great green pool where two