“I’ve heard my father say size was pretty much a matter of conditions. So, with the right conditions, I suppose a brook trout could do pretty well.”
Lon nodded. “That’s about it, Sam. And William Trout was a reg’lar parlor boarder. He lived in a nat’ral trout brook, which means a brook that yields trout food; then Old Man Freeman kept fattin’ up his rations. So he had nothin’ to do but keep on growin’ and growin’.”
“But I should think somebody’d have caught him,” Step put in.
“The old man stood guard. He’d posted his land with ‘No fishin’’ signs, and he was runnin’ a shotgun quarantine to boot. Fact is, he peppered two-three trespassers with birdshot, and after that got to be known he wasn’t bothered much.”
“But why did the fish stay in the pool? Why didn’t he run down stream or up?”
Lon chuckled. “That was where Old Man Freeman figgered again. He liked to let on that William Trout lingered from pure affection for him, but I noticed that what with rocks and wire there was a fairly effective fish-screen below the pool. It didn’t show much, but it was there. And there was another a lot like it higher up. No; the big trout was caged all right. And that, I reckon, was why Old Man Freeman come to be dead where they found him.”
“Go on! Tell us!” cried two or three together.
“Well, that summer I was out to see the old man half a dozen times. He was growin’ mighty stiff and feeble, and more obstinate and notional about William Trout. He’d sit on the bank for hours, mumblin’ to himself and talkin’ to that fish. And William—he was livelier’n a cricket, but, somehow, I never seemed to get a chance to look him over, cool and calculatin’. The old man let on he was worryin’ about what’d happen to William, if he should be took sick, allowin’ that the critter’d die of a broken heart or some such foolishness. I tried to cheer him up, but it didn’t do no good. William’d pine and waste away, and that was all there was to it. But one day, when I heard that Old Man Freeman was dead, and that somebody’d found him lyin’ between the brook and his cabin, and when I went out to the place—well, I’ll own up I took a look for William Trout. I couldn’t spy him nowhere in the pool. I cupped the water, but he didn’t come. Then I prodded around with a pole, and still no William! That sot me thinkin’. I moseyed down to the screen below the pool, and sure enough, the wires was cut. I reckoned I knew what had happened. The old man must ’a’ felt the last attack comin’ on, and used up what strength he had gettin’ to the wire and clearin’ a way for William to scoot—he didn’t mean to have no fellow with a net scoopin’ up the big fish and never givin’ him a chance. And William, he found the gap, and vamoosed; and the old man, he tried to get back to the cabin, and dropped half-way. So that was the end of the story for both of them, so far as I ever heard tell.”
“But didn’t anybody ever catch the big trout?” queried Step.
“Enough tried—they fair wore a path along the bank below the pool; but nobody landed William. There were a couple o’ ponds the brook run through, and he might ’a’ stayed in one of ’em, or then again he might ’a’ navigated right through to the big river. Anyhow, he dropped out o’ sight, and stayed out. And that’s the end of the story. And the moral of it? Well, I dunno’s there’s any moral, exactly, except that you can’t get me to say how big a brook trout can grow.”