The Bully would have been scared if that possibility had not been denied him. Instead of fleeing in fear he came out from under cover and shouted: “Are you talking about me? You big bluffer! I’ll make you food for the crows.” If the truth must be told, both the combatants used language that was not only exceedingly scurrilous, but shockingly profane. In this gentle exercise the Bully had the best of it and the pond trout became so enraged that he dashed at his enemy with jaws extended. The Bully was so busy swearing that he came near losing his life. As it was, he dodged just in time to prevent those powerful jaws from closing upon him, but not quickly enough to escape a slashing from two big teeth which laid his side open in deep gashes. He was a surprised Bully, but not dismayed. The battle that followed had no historian. Of much that took place, the whirling and darting, the snapping and struggling, the reports that have come down through the years are somewhat confused and even contradictory. It seems clear that at the first the Bully had the worst of it. Besides the gashes received in the first attack, he lost one fin and a piece of his tail early in the fray. The pond trout had all the advantage in size and was cheered on by his friends; but the Bully’s gymnastic exercises, fighting with the rapids, stood him in good stead now. His muscles were steel, while those of the pond trout had grown somewhat flabby since he had come to content himself with life in the still water. As they feinted and charged and whirled about, the pond champion began to grow short of breath and found increasing difficulty in meeting the rushes of the Bully, who seemed to grow more agile as the battle raged. Then there came a moment when the Bully feinted for his opponent’s tail, and, when the pond trout turned suddenly to guard his caudal extremity, he left his throat unguarded for an instant--and it was all over. Once the Bully had set his teeth into the white throat he shook and raged and tore while the life-blood of his foe gushed out, and the denizens of the pond saw their supposedly invincible warrior die before their eyes. Nothing is known, certainly, of the Bully’s life after this up to the day that he met his death. It is whispered that before leaving the pond he undertook to capture a white miller that came fluttering over the surface of the water just at dusk one night and found himself fast at the end of a line as in his boyhood. Some even assume to say that after vainly flinging himself into the air in the effort to shake the miller out of his mouth, he said goodbye to those who had been drawn about him by his struggles, and was about ready to give up hope when one last struggle took him over and under a root and he found himself free. They even go so far as to say that for many a day after that the miller stuck to the Bully’s jaw, and that from it floated a fine, white thread.