Oswald stealthily put forward his hand, but the trout was on the alert, and long before he could reach its gills it had darted into the pool, escaping Artie also, who nearly fell into the water in his efforts to secure it.
"Missed him! What a shame! And he was such a beauty!" cried the disconsolate boys.
"Now then, what are you doing there, you young poachers?" shouted a voice from the opposite bank, and, looking up, the children saw a tall man, in a corduroy velveteen suit and a soft round hat, frowning at them with a most unamiable expression of countenance.
They were so astonished that none of them knew what to say.
"Come out of that stream this minute!" he commanded the boys, who obeyed, but naturally on the side where Linda and Sylvia were standing looking rather frightened at such an unexpected and angry visitor. The man, who had the appearance of a gamekeeper, crossed the river easily by jumping from stone to stone, and striding up to the little girls, peeped inside their basket.
"As I thought!" he remarked. "Now, you young rascals, do you know that I can take you all up and send you to prison for poaching?"
"Why," gasped Oswald, "we were only catching some trout!"
"Only catching some trout! He says he was only catching some trout!" echoed the man, as if he were appealing to an imaginary companion. "I suppose he wouldn't call that poaching? Oh, no!"
"We get them like this in our own stream at home," said Artie.
"That's quite a different matter. Because you get bread and butter at home's no reason why you should walk into my house and take mine, is it? This fishing happens to be preserved, and I've got the care of it. It's a very serious offence is poaching. I've caught you red-handed. There's the trout in that basket to prove my words."