. . .At last he comes to where you can actually crook your claws under his tail. Ever so cautiously you move your paw gently halfway up towards his head, and then, when your claws are almost touching him, you strike—strike, once and hard, with a hooking blow that sends him whirling like a bar of silver far out on the bank behind you. And trout is good—the plump, dark, pink-banded trout of the mountain streams. But you must not strike one fraction of a second too soon, for if your paw has more than an inch to travel before the claws touch him he is gone, and all you feel is the flip of a tail upon the inner side of the paw, and all your time is wasted.

It is hard to learn to wait long enough, and I know that at first I used to strike at fish that were a foot away, with no more chance of catching them than of making supper off a waterfall. But father and mother used to catch a fish apiece for us almost every evening, and gradually Kahwa and I began to. . . Read More