Part 5 (1/2)

CHAPTER IV

THE TROUT POOL

The brook that flowed into Mill Stream, just above the old mill, itself, came down from some heavily wooded hills a few miles to the northeast, and its waters were ever cold, even in hottest summer, save in one or two open places in the intervening meadows. It was called ”Cold Brook”

by some of the farmers. Henry Burns and Harvey and Bess Thornton had crossed this brook, by way of the bridge on their flight to the mill.

A wayfarer, standing on the little bridge, of an afternoon, keeping motionless and in the shadow, might sometimes see, far down in the clear water, vague objects that looked like shadows cast by sticks. He might gaze for many minutes and see no sign of life or motion to them. Then, perchance, one of these same grey shadows might disappear in the twinkling of an eye; the observer would see the surface of the water break in a tiny whirl; the momentary flash of a silvery side, spotted with red, appear--and the trout would vanish back into the deep water once more.

Let the traveller try as he might, he seldom got one of these fish.

They were too wary; ”educated,” the farmers called them. They certainly knew enough not to bite.

Tim Reardon occasionally came back to Benton with two or three of the trout tucked inside his blouse; but he wouldn't tell how he got 'em--not even to Jack Harvey, to whom he was loyal in all else. Most folks came back empty-handed.

To be sure, there was one part of the brook where the least experienced fisherman might cast a line and draw out a fish. But that was just the very part of all the brook where n.o.body was allowed. It was the pool belonging to Farmer Ellison.

A little more than a mile up the brook from the bridge the water came tumbling down a series of short, abrupt cascades, into a pool, formed by a small dam thrown across the brook between banks that were quite steep.

This pool broadened out in its widest part to a width of several rods, bordered by thick alders, swampy land in places, and in part by a grove of beech trees.

Come upon this pool at twilight and you would see the trout playing there as though they had just been let out of school. Try to catch one--and if Farmer Ellison wasn't down upon you in a hurry, it was because he was napping.

You might have bought Farmer Ellison's pet cow, but not a chance to fish in this pool. Indeed, he seldom fished it himself, but he prized the trout like precious jewels. John and James Ellison, Farmer Ellison's sons, and Benjamin, their cousin, fished the pool once in a great while--and got soundly trounced if caught. It was Farmer Ellison's hobby, this pool and its fish. He gloated over them like a miser. He watched them leap, and counted them when they did, as a miser would money.

The dam held the trout in the pool downstream, and the cascades--or the upper cascade--held them from escaping upstream. There were three smaller cascades which a l.u.s.ty trout could ascend by a fine series of rushes and leapings. The upper water-fall was too steep to be scaled.

When the water in the brook was high there was an outlet in the dam for it to pa.s.s through, to which a gate opened, and protected at all times by heavy wire netting.

Farmer Ellison's house was situated on a hill overlooking this part of the brook, less than a half mile away.

Some way up the brook, if one followed a path through mowing-fields from Farmer Ellison's, and crossed a little foot-bridge over the brook, he would come eventually upon a house, weather-beaten and unpainted, small and showing every sign of neglect. The gra.s.s grew long in the dooryard.

A few hens scratched the weeds in what once might have been flower-beds.

The roof was sagging, and the chimney threatened to topple in the first high wind.

The sun was s.h.i.+ning in at the windows of this house, at the close of an afternoon, a few days following the adventure of Henry Burns and Harvey in the mill. It revealed a girl, little, st.u.r.dy and of well-knit figure, though in whose childish face there was an underlying trace of shrewdness unusual in one so young; like a little wild creature, or a kitten that has found itself more often chased than petted.

The girl was busily engaged, over a kitchen fire, stirring some sort of porridge in a dish. Clearly, hers were spirits not easily depressed by her surroundings, for she whistled at her task,--as good as any boy could have whistled,--and now and again, from sheer excess of animation, she whisked away from the stove and danced about the old kitchen, all alone by herself.

”Isn't that oatmeal most ready, Bess?” came a querulous voice presently, from an adjoining room. ”What makes you so long?”

”Coming, gran', right away now,” replied the child. ”The coffee's hot, too. Don't it smell go-o-od? But there's only one--”

”What?” queried the voice.

”Nothing,” said the child.

She took a single piece of bread from a box, toasted it for a moment, put it on a plate, poured a cup of coffee, dished out a mess of the porridge, and carried it all into the next room. There, an elderly woman, muttering and scolding to herself as she lay on a couch, received it.

”Too bad the rheumatics bother so, gran',” said the child, consolingly.