But the expression upon Farmer Ellison's face changed, as he gazed; his brow wrinkled into a frown. His eyes flashed angrily.
What was that, moving to and fro amid the alder clumps by the border of the trout pool? There was no breeze stirring the alders; but one single alder stick—was not it waving back and forth most mysteriously?
Farmer Ellison gave an exclamation of anger. He knew these early morning poachers. This would not be the first he had chased before sunrise, taking a fish from the forbidden waters. He stepped back into the entry, seized a stout cane, and started forth down through the fields, bending low and screening himself as he progressed by whatsoever trees and bushes were along the way.
That someone was there, whipping the stream, there could be no doubt. Yet, someone—whoever it was—must be short, or else, perchance, crouched low in the undergrowth; for Farmer Ellison could get no glimpse of the fisherman.
Crack! A dead branch snapped under Farmer Ellison's heavy boot.
Bess Thornton, gleeful,—joyous over the conquest of her third trout, looked quickly behind her, startled by the snapping of the branch only a few rods away. What she saw made her gasp. She almost cried out with the sudden fright. But she acted promptly.
Giving the pole a sharp thrust, she shoved it in under the bank, beneath the water. The trout! The precious trout! Ah, she could not leave them. Hastily she snatched them up, and thrust all three inside her gingham waist, dropping them in with a wrench at the neck-band.
"Ugh! how they squirm," she cried, softly.
Then, creeping to the water's edge, she dived in—neatly as any trout could have done it—and disappeared. One who did not know Bess Thornton might well have been alarmed now, for the child seemed to be lost. The surface of the brook where she had gone down remained unruffled. Then, clear across on the other side, one watching sharply might have seen a child's head appear out of the pool, at the edge of a clump of bull-rushes; might have seen her emerge half out of water, and hide herself from view of anyone on the opposite shore.
She had swum the entire width of the pool under water.