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 shining 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.

"If they last to-morrow, I'm going to tell old Witham and make him send you something good to eat."

"No, you won't," exclaimed the woman sharply. "Much he cares! Says he pays me too much now for cooking; and he says I've got money tucked away here. Wish I had."

"So do I," said the child. "I'd buy the biggest doll you ever saw."

"Fudge!" cried the old woman. "Why, you've outgrown 'em long ago."

"I know it," said the child, solemnly. "But I'd just like to have a big one, once."

"And so you should, if we had our rights," cried Grannie Thornton, lifting herself up on an elbow, with a jerk that brought forth an exclamation of pain. "If he didn't own everything. If he didn't get it all--what we used to own."

"Old Ellison?" suggested the child.

"Yes, Jim Ellison." Grannie Thornton sat up and shook a lean fist toward the window that opened off toward the hill. "Oh, he bought it all right.

He paid for it, I suppose. But it's ours, by rights. We owned it all once, from Ten Mile Wood to the bridge. But it's gone now."

"I don't see why we don't own it now, if that's so," said the child.

"Well, it's law doin's," muttered the woman. "Get your own supper, and don't bother me."

"I don't understand," said the child, as she went back to the kitchen.

She might have understood better if Grannie Thornton had explained the real reason: that the Thorntons had gone wild and run through their farm property; mortgaged it and sold it out; and that Ellison, a shrewd buyer, had got it when it was to be had cheapest. But she asked one more question.

"Gran'" she said, peeping in at the door, "will we ever get it again, s'pose?"

"Mercy sakes, how do I know!" came the answer. "It's ours now, by rights. Will you ever stop talking?"

The child looked wonderingly out across the fields; seated herself by the window, and still gazed as she drank her coffee and ate her scanty supper. She was sitting there when night shut down and hid the hill and the brook from sight.

The sun, himself an early riser, was up not anywhere near so early next morning as was Bess Thornton. There was light in the east, but the sun had not begun to roll above the hill-tops when the child stole quietly out of bed, slipped into her few garments, and hurried barefoot, from the room where she and Grannie Thornton slept. The old woman was still slumbering heavily.

"I'll not ask that old Witham for anything for gran," she said. "I'll get her something,--and something she'll like, too. It all belongs to us, anyway, gran' said."

The girl gently slid the bolt of the kitchen door, stepped outside and closed the door after her. Then she made her way out through the neglected garden to an old apple-tree, against which there leaned a long slender alder pole, with a line and hook attached. Throwing this over her shoulder, she started down through the fields in the direction of the brook.

On the way, a few gra.s.shoppers, roused from their early naps in the gra.s.s by the girl's bare feet, jumped this side and that. But, with the coolness of the hour, they seemed to have some of old Grannie Thornton's rheumatism in their joints, for they tumbled and sprawled clumsily. The girl quickly captured several of them, tying them up in a fold of her handkerchief.

Presently she came near the borders of the pool, dear to the heart of Farmer Ellison. But the edge of the pool on the side where she walked was boggy. Gazing sharply for some moments up at the big house on the hill, the girl darted down to the edge of the brook close by the dam, then suddenly skimmed across it to the other side.

A little way above the dam, on that side, there were clumps of bushes, among which one might steal softly to the water's edge, on good, firm footing. The girl did this, seated herself on a little knoll behind a screen of shrubs, baited the hook with a fat gra.s.shopper and cast it into the pool.

"Gra.s.shopper Green, go catch me a trout," she whispered; "and don't you dare come back without a big--"

Splash! There was a quick, sharp whirl in the still water; a tautening of the line, a hard jerk of the rod, and the girl was drawing in a plump fellow that was fighting gamely and wrathfully for his freedom. The fish darted to and fro for a moment, lashed the water into a miniature upheaval, and then swung in to where a small but strong little hand clutched him.

"Oh, you beauty!" she exclaimed, gazing triumphantly and admiringly at his brilliant spots. "Didn't you know better than to try to eat poor old Gra.s.shopper Green? See what you get for it. Gran'll eat you now."

She took the trout from the hook, dropped it among the shrubs, took another "gra.s.shopper green" from her handkerchief, and cast again. A second and a third trout rewarded her efforts.