And then the creek that meandered through the meadows miles and miles from the great peat bog where our winter fuel came from, making one turn more tortuous than another, with hole after hole in the deep pockets that were fairly alive with yellow perch and their silver-scaled neighbors, whatever you would call them. We called them “skaller.” I could go to a dozen of them blindfolded, I think, even now, and bait my hook and throw it in the exact spot where a perch is waiting to pull the cork under with one quick, determined jerk. No nibbling about him; his mind is always made up and ready. Sometimes in my dreams I sit by the creek in one particular spot I have never forgotten, with feet hanging over the edge, the slanting sunlight on the dark waters, red-finned perch and silver fish darting hither and thither, and the soft west wind in the grass; and then I am perfectly happy. Our ambition did not rise to five-pound pickerel in those days. Maybe there weren’t any. My little boy and I found plenty in after years, and little else. My pretty fish seemed to be gone. Perhaps the pickerel had eaten them up, like some mean trust on dry land. If he had, we got square with him. We ate him in turn. They had reduced the catching of him to an exact science. Drop your bait there, right in the edge of the rushes, so--a swirl and a sudden tightening of the line! Let him run, and take out your watch. Eight minutes to a dot, and he is off again. That is when he turns the bait around in his mouth and swallows it, having lain by waiting for signs of treachery. Now, pull him in. Here he is! Hi, what a big fellow! [Illustration: WHERE I SHOT MY FIRST DUCK.] It was up here by this turn that I shot my first duck. It was in the winter vacation, and I had found out that here, where there was a stretch of open water, a flock of black-headed ducks were at home. I burrowed through six feet of snow to the water’s edge and shot one of them as they flew. It fell and dived, and I threw my clothes in the snow and jumped after. Ugh! it was cold. I dodged the floating ice as well as I could and kept turning the cakes over and over, looking for my duck, but it was not there. It was not till I climbed ashore again and dressed myself with chattering teeth that, happening to look under the bank where the current had cut the earth away, I saw it sitting composedly on the little shelving beach below. I can feel now the throbbing of my heart as I leaned over, and reaching down with infinite stealth, caught it by the neck and yanked it up. The pride of that homeward procession with the head of the duck flapping from my game-bag! And then, after all, the cook had to wring its neck. In my joy I had forgotten to kill it. The shot had only stunned it.