their
splashings through the twilight of evening and dawn.

Every day there were new arrivals at the spawning-beds, and among them
the strong and wary grilse soon found a mate. She was considerably
larger than he, a trim young salmon of the second year and perhaps nine
pounds in weight. But his radiant colouring, his strength and his
activity, as he swam around her and displayed his charms, appeared to
content her. With his bony nose he dug her a circular nest in the
gravel, where the current ran clear but not too strong; and in this nest
she laid her countless eggs, while he rubbed his side caressingly
against her shining flanks. When her eggs were all laid and fertilized
he drifted away from her, dropped down to the nearest pool, and lay
there sluggish and uninterested for awhile, until, seized once more by
the longing for the great salt tide, he joined a returning company of
"slinks" and hurried back down-river to the sea.

III

When he reached the deep sea once more, and regained his appetite among
the sweeping tides, he once more began to grow. His fins became smaller
in proportion to his bulk, and he was no longer a grilse, but a salmon.
His life, however, underwent no great change; his adventures, perils,
interests, appetites, were all much the same as during his first season
in the sea. Only he now swam with a certain majesty, ignoring the grilse
and smaller salmon who swam and fed beside him; for he was of splendid,
constantly growing stature, of the lords of his kind.

This time he let nearly the whole round of the year go by, feeding at
leisure and lazily dodging the seals, among the icy but populous tides
that swung beyond the mouth of Hudson Straits. Then, late the following
winter, long before the dark earth had any word of spring, spring
stirred secretly in his veins, and he remembered the sunny gravel bars
of the Great South Branch. The sudden urge of his desire turned him
about, and he began to swim tirelessly southward, companioned by an
ardent, silvery host into whose veins at the same time the same
compelling summons had been flashed.

It was late May when the returning salmon, having successfully eluded
the snares of the nets and the assaults of harbour seal and dogfish,
came again to the mouth of his native river and fanned his gills once
more in its sweet, amber current. He was now a good forty pounds in
weight, and his clean blue-and-silver body was adorned with fine
markings of extraordi