One sat up close
by the dead brake, holding a bit of bread in his forepaws like a
squirrel. The brake stirred suddenly; before he could jump my
hand closed over him, and slipping the other hand beneath him I
held him up to my face to watch him between my fingers. He made
no movement to escape, but only trembled violently. His legs
seemed too weak to support his weight now; he lay down; his eyes
closed. One convulsive twitch and he was dead--dead of fright in
a hand which had not harmed him.
It was at this colony, whose members were all strangers to me,
that I learned in a peculiar way of the visiting habits of wood
mice, and at the same time another lesson that I shall not soon
forget. For several days I had been trying every legitimate way
in vain to catch a big trout, a monster of his kind, that lived
in an eddy behind a rock up at the inlet. Trout were scarce in
that lake, and in summer the big fish are always lazy and hard to
catch. I was trout hungry most of the time, for the fish that I
caught were small, and few and far between. Several times,
however, when casting from the shore at the inlet for small
fish, I had seen swirls in a great eddy near the farther shore,
which told me plainly of big fish beneath; and one day, when a
huge trout rolled half his length out of water behind my fly,
small fry lost all their interest and I promised myself the joy
of feeling my rod bend and tingle beneath the rush of that big
trout if it took all summer.
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