in a direction at right angles to the path of the bear. The ewe looked up with a startled bleat, wheeled, sprang nimbly before the lamb, and faced her doom dauntlessly, with lowered head.
The ram's mild gaze changed in a flash to one of cold, yellow savagery at the sight of the great black beast invading his kingdom. Down went his conquering head. For just a fraction of a second his sturdy body sagged back, as if he were about to sit down. This, so to speak, was the bending of the bow. Then he launched himself straight down the slope, all his strength, his weight, and the force of gravity combining to drive home that mighty stroke.
The bear had never, in all his experience with sheep, encountered one whose resistance was worth taking into account. The defiance of the ewe was less than nothing to him. But as he saw, from the corner of his eye, the huge bulk plunging down upon him, he hesitated, and half turned, with great paw upraised for a finishing blow.
He turned not quite in time, however, and his defence was not quite strenuous enough for the emergency. He struck like lightning, as a bear always can, but just before the stroke could find its mark the ram's armed forehead crashed into his ribs. The blow, catching him as it did, was irresistible. His claws tore off a patch of wool and skin, and ploughed red furrows across the ram's shoulder—but the next instant he was sprawling, his breath jarred from his lungs, against a stump some ten feet down the slope.
As the bear struggled to his feet, furious but half-daunted with amazement, the ram danced backward a pace or two on his nimble feet, as if showing off, and then delivered his second charge. The bewildered bear was again caught unready, irresolute as to whether he should fight or flee; and again he was knocked headlong, a yard or two further down the slope. His was not the dauntless spirit that most of his kindred would have shown in such a case, and he would willingly have made his escape at once if he had seen his way quite clear to do so. But at this moment, while he hesitated, he heard a man's voice shouting loudly, and saw the tall backwoodsman running toward him up the hill. This sight turned his alarm into a blind panic. His feet seemed to acquire wings as he tore madly away among the thickets. When he was hidden by the leafage, his path could still be followed by the crashing of dry branches and the clattering of loosened stones.
The woodsman had seen the whole incident, and was wild with enthusiasm over the prowess of his prize. Bears had been the most dreaded scourge of the settlement sheep-farmers, but now, as he proudly said to himself, he had a ram that could "lick a b'ar silly!" He bore no grudge on account of his discomfiture that morning beside the spring, but rather thought of it with appreciation as a further evidence of his favourite's cunning and prowess; and he foresaw, with a chuckle, that there were painful surprises in store for the bears of the Ringwaak range. He had made a wise purchase indeed when he saved that splendid beast from the butcher.
Hearing the man's voice, the ram had halted in dismay just when he was about to charge the bear a third time. He had no mind to go again into captivity. But, on the other hand, for all his lordliness of spirit, he felt that the man was his master. At first he lowered his head threateningly, as if about to attack; but when the backwoodsman shouted at him there was an authority in those tones which he could not withstand, and he sullenly drew aside. With a good-natured laugh, the man picked the lamb up in his arms, whereupon the mother stepped timidly to his side, evidently having no fear. The man rubbed her nose kindly, and stroked her ears, and gave her something from his pocket which she ate greedily; and, as the ram looked on, the anger gradually faded out from his yellow eyes. At length the man turned and walked slowly down the hill, carrying the lamb. The ewe followed, crowding as close to him as she could, and stumbling as she went because her eyes were fixed upon her little one.
The ram hesitated. He looked at the hillside, the woods, and the sky beginning to grow chill with the onrush of twilight. Then he looked at the retreating figures. Suddenly he saw his world growing empty and desolate. With an anxious bleat he trotted after the ewe, and took his docile place a few feet behind the man's heels. The man glanced over his shoulders, and a smile of pleasure softened his rugged face. In a few moments the little procession disappeared in the woods, moving toward the settlement, and Ringwaak Hill was left solitary in the dusk, with the lonely notes of the night-hawks twanging over it.
The Master of Golden Pool
The Master of Golden Pool
ne shore of the pool was a spacious sweeping curve of the sward, dotted with clumps of blue flag-flowers. From the green fringes of this shore the bottom sloped away softly over a sand so deep and glowing in its hue of orange-yellow as to give the pool the rich name by which it was known for miles up and down the hurrying Clearwater. The other shore was a high, overhanging bank, from whose top drooped a varied leafage of birch, ash, poplar, and hemlock. Under this bank the water was deep and dark, a translucent black with trembling streaks and glints of amber. Fifty yards up-stream a low fall roared musically; but before reaching the fresh tranquillity of the pool, the current bore no signs of its disturbance save a few softly whirling foam clusters. Light airs, perfumed with birch and balsam and warm scents of the sun-steeped sward, drew over the pool from time to time, wrinkling and clouding its glassy surface. Birds flew over it, catching the small flies to whom its sheen was a ceaseless lure. And huge dragon-flies, with long, iridescent bodies and great jewelled, sinister eyes, danced and darted above it.
The cool black depths under the bank retained their coolness through the fiercest heats of summer, because just here the brook was joined by the waters of an icy spring stealing down through a crevice of the rocks; and here in the deepest recess, exacting toll of all the varied life that passed his domain, the master of Golden Pool made his home.
For several years the great trout had held his post in the pool, defying every lure of the crafty fisherman. The Clearwater was a protected stream, being leased to a rich fishing club; and the master of the pool was therefore secure against the treacherous assaults of net or dynamite. Many times each season fishermen would come and pit their skill against his cunning; but never a fly could tempt him, never a silvery, trolled minnow or whirling spoon deceive him to the fatal rush. At some new lure he would rise lazily once in awhile, revealing his bulk to the ambitious angler—but never to take hold. Contemptuously he would flout the cheat with his broad flukes, and go down again with a grand swirl to his lair under the rock.
It was only to the outside world—to the dragon-fly, and the bird, and the chattering red squirrel in the overhanging hemlock—that the deep water under the bank looked black. To the trout in his lair, looking upward toward the sunlight, the whole pool had a golden glow. His favourite position was a narrow place between two stones, where he lay with head up-stream and belly about two inches from the sandy bottom, gently fanning the water with his party-coloured fins, and opening and closing his rosy gill-fringes as he breathed. In length he was something over twenty inches, with a thick, deep body tapering finely to the powerful tail. Like all the trout of the Clearwater, he was silver-bellied with a light pink flush, the yellow and brown markings on his sides light in tone, and his spots of the most high, intense vermilion. His great lower jaw was thrust forward in a way that gave a kind of bulldog ferocity to his expression.
The sky of the big trout's world was the flat surface of Golden Pool. From the unknown place beyond that sky there came to his eyes but moving shadows, arrangements of light and dark. He could
