the minnows were getting scarce along the lake
front, so I had to get up early to get enough to feed them and the rest
of the family. I said at last that I was through feeding gulls. I told
the children that either they'd have to do it, or that the gulls would
have to go to work like the rest of the family and fish for themselves.
But the children wouldn't do it, nor the gulls, either. Then I said I
would take those birds down in the woods and leave them somewhere. I
did that. I put them into a basket and shut them in tight and took them
five miles down the river and let them loose in a good place where there
were plenty of fish. They flew off and I went home. When I got to the
house they'd been there three hours, looking at the dip net and
squalling, and they ate a pail heaping full of fish, and you could have
put both gulls into the pail when they got through. I was going on a
long trip with a party next morning, and we took the gulls along. We fed
them about a bushel of trout and left them seventeen miles down the
river, just before night, and drove home in the dark. I didn't think the
gulls would find their way back that time, but they did. They were there
before daybreak, fresh and hungry as ever. Then I knew it was no use.
The ax was the only thing that would get me out of that mess. The
children haven't brought home any wild pets since."

That you see is just unembellished history, and convincing. I regret
that I cannot say as much for Charlie's narrative. It is a likely story
enough, as such things go, but there are points about it here and there
which seem to require confirmation. I am told that it is a story well
known and often repeated in Nova Scotia, but even that cannot be
accepted as evidence of its entire truth. Being a fish-story it would
seem to require something more. This is the tale as Charlie told it.

"Once there was a half-breed Indian," he said, "who had a pet trout
named Tommy, which he kept in a barrel. But the trout got pretty big and
had to have the water changed a good deal to keep him alive. The Indian
was too lazy to do that, and he thought he would teach the trout to live
out of water. So he did. He commenced by taking Tommy out of the barrel
for a few minutes at a time, pretty often, and then he took him out
oftener and kept him out longer, and by and by Tommy got so he could
stay out a good while if he was in the wet grass. Then the Indian found
he could leave him in the wet grass all