murder of fish by liming the water was already prevalent.

Yielding to my request and perhaps his own desire--manfully kept in
check that morning--Pike very carefully approached that pool, commanding
me to sit down while he reconnoitred from the meadow upon the right bank
of the stream. And the place which had so sadly quenched the fire of the
poor baker's love filled my childish heart with dread and deep wonder
at the cruelty of women. But as for John Pike, all he thought of was the
fish and the best way to get at him.

Very likely that hole is "holed out" now, as the Yankees well express
it, or at any rate changed out of knowledge. Even in my time a very
heavy flood entirely altered its character; but to the eager eye of Pike
it seemed pretty much as follows, and possibly it may have come to such
a form again:

The river, after passing though a hurdle fence at the head of the
meadow, takes a little turn or two of bright and shallow indifference,
then gathers itself into a good strong slide, as if going down a slope
instead of steps. The right bank is high and beetles over with yellow
loam and grassy fringe; but the other side is of flinty shingle, low and
bare and washed by floods. At the end of this rapid, the stream turns
sharply under an ancient alder tree into a large, deep, calm repose,
cool, unruffled, and sheltered from the sun by branch and leaf--and that
is the hole of poor Crocker.

At the head of the pool (where the hasty current rushes in so eagerly,
with noisy excitement and much ado) the quieter waters from below,
having rested and enlarged themselves, come lapping up round either
curve, with some recollection of their past career, the hoary experience
of foam. And sidling toward the new arrival of the impulsive column,
where they meet it, things go on, which no man can describe without his
mouth being full of water. A "V" is formed, a fancy letter V, beyond
any designer's tracery, and even beyond his imagination, a perpetually
fluctuating limpid wedge, perpetually crenelled and rippled into by
little ups and downs that try to make an impress, but can only glide
away upon either side or sink in dimples under it. And here a gray bough
of the ancient alder stretches across, like a thirsty giant's arm, and
makes it a very ticklish place to throw a fly. Yet this was the very
spot our John Pike must put his fly into, or lose his crown.

Because the great tenant of Crocker's Hole, who allowed no other fi