gratified. He was making for a low rock which was well imbedded in the water and was partly overshadowed by the prominent one on which he then stood. The descent was slippery and he dropped on his knees to look over before attempting it. To his surprise he found himself looking directly down upon a straw hat below which was the familiar figure of a girl clad in a brown outing suit. One knee rested on the rock, while the other supported a small unmounted photograph, which she was spreading out with her fingers. He leaned further over and looked closely. His heart beat wildly as he recognized in it himself seated upon that same rock, writing in his note book. He did not know that she

had ever taken a picture of him. He did not move for a moment, and while he looked the girl's head dropped slowly forward until her forehead rested against the picture.

In an instant he had swung himse.f down beside her and dropped his arm across her shoulders.

She started up with a little cry and then seeing it was he, burst into tears and buried her face against his neck.

The shadows of the pine trees reached well across the road when they slowly took their way back to the hotel. Her arm was linked through his and their fingers were interlaced, but for the first time in the history of their acquaintance there was no word spoken between them.

CHAPTER V.

He talks with the Trout and with the

Bacillus.

NE fine day Tzum Sammon the Trout came rushing down stream and with a quick sweep of his tail brought himself about as a beautiful yacht does, with its sails all trembling, his head up stream and his nose quite near the flat shell of our little hero. What a fine fellow! Spotted and flecked, with little red patches on his throat. Had he forgotten something that he turned so quickly, or was it the motion of an oar in the water which had startled him? Whatever it was, he remained quite still, a picture of beauty, the only motion visible being that of nis fins and tail and a quick, short turning of the eyes. Genial Klogh, always realy to make friends, ventured to ask him where he was going and whence he

really appeared ready to pick Klogh up and add him to the mass of provisions already stored in his capacious stomach, but he seemed to repent of his bloodthirsty thought, or was it because he was already full of beetles and bugs and small crayfish? At any rate he condedescended to reply in a somewhat contemptuous tone, "I am on my way to the sea, where I shall lose my spots, my muscles will become a deeper pink, and my sides will be like silver. I shall grow very strong and quick of movement and I shall come back to my early fresnwater home each year with a crowd of my fellows." The thought of the scenes and associations he was leaving appeared to move the trout and make him reminiscent, for coming nearer to Klogn he continued with gentler voice: "You ask me whence I came. From a region you will never see and of whose beauties you do not dream. I was born in an ice-cold brook which is fed by the perpetual snow of the mountain peak. Well do I remember how it gurgles through the deep canyons, where the footfall of the timid deer makes no sound on the deep moss covering fallen and sleeping forest giants. Salmon berry and Salal

and high brake from which peers Namowich the Buck, protects this silent cemetery from rude intrusion; only the deer and Kwis-Kwis, the chirping squirrel, Siam the Bear, Waugh-Waugh the Owl, the slimy snail and the purling brook in its lowest recesses know its secrets. Ah, yes," said the trout, sadly, fanning the water more vigorously with his fins and tail, "shall I ever forget that brook, how it grew into a torrent on its way to the sea, caressing the daring water-ouzel with its spray, the roar of its riffles drowning the kingfisher's rattle; the deep clear pools which reflected the ferncovered banks on their glassy surface, pools wherein my larger brothers lay in lazy indifference, scorning surface flies and picking choice food from the rocks of the bottom. The warm hillsides, too, alive with flitting butterflies, the sunny rocks sought by little lizards; the sweet odor of spruce and fir, and far above in the summer sky, Chak-Chak, the soaring eagle, making circles in the blue. I shall never forget it," he continued, ap.

stumps which blush rosy red in the light of sunset." Tzum Sammon stopped and sighed. Then he continued: "Those beautiful spring days when the green is gradually hiding the sharp outlines of the trees, the grays and greens of the low hillsides, the fleecy down from the cottonwoods, and the flights of delicious caddis flies-those lovely riffles, shall I ever reach them again?" And overcome by his emotion, he settled quietly on the bottom, as trout will, even forgetting to move his fins, and remained silent or some time. Then, as if recovering from a trance into which his revery had thrown him, he snorted a good-by to Klogh, and turning so suddenly that he sent a cloud of silt and mud over the latter, went down stream like an arrow.

Klogh gave a little scornful shrug. "Very prettily told," said he to himself, "but what does he know about 'sweet odors of spruce and fir?' As for lizards, I don't believe he ever saw one. What are they, anyway? And what does ne mean by 'sentinel stumps blushing red

at sunset!' Bah!" And he drew his mantle a little closer about him, noting with pride how smooth and pearl-like his shell was within, and how rapidly it was growing. Why, there was half an inch of delicate edge as thin as tissue paper, all grown within two months!

Another day he heard a gentle tapping on his shell, and a wee small voice crying: "Let me in! Let me in!"

"Who are you?" asked Klogh, keeping the valves of his shell tightly shut, "and why do you wish to get within my shell?" "I am the Typhoid Bacillus," answered the one knocking for admittance in a low whisper, "and I come from way up the river where there empties a drain from a fever-infested house. If you will only let me in I will not hurt you, but I will soon have with me in your body thousands of my fellows, and some time, if Man eats you, we will kill him."

"Ah, you will kill, will you," said Klogh, remembering the graveyard in the bottom of the tumbler, the death of his little friend down the bay, and the