"Where was it--about a mile above your house?" queried Tim. The girl nodded. "In the pool where the big tree's fallen across," she said. "I guess he's the big one I've tried to get, a lot of times," said Tim. "But I haven't seen him lately. I thought he'd gone down into Ellison's pool. I'd like to see him." He was a fisherman by nature, was Little Tim, and the very mention of the big trout made his eyes twinkle. "Come on up," said Bess Thornton. Tim hesitated. "It's most too late," he replied. "I'll be late to supper now, if I don't run." "Oh, never mind," she urged. "I'll show you just where I saw him. I just as lieve you'd catch him." The invitation was too much for Tim, and he started off across the fields with Bess Thornton. "That fish'll never bite," he said, as they went along; "I've tried him with worms and grasshoppers and wasps and crickets, and that fly made of feathers that Jack gave me. He knows a whole lot, that old trout. Guess he's a school-teacher, he knows so much." "I'm going to catch him, anyway, if you don't," said the girl. "I know what I'm going to do." "What's that?" asked Tim, in a tone that indicated he had no great faith in her success. "I'm going to bait up two hooks with a whole lot of worms, and I'm not going to put 'em into the pool till after it gets dark," replied Bess Thornton. "And I'm going to let 'em stay there all night. He's such a sly old thing you can't get near the bank without he knows it. Then when it gets morning, and he's hungry, perhaps he'll see all those worms and just go and catch himself." "Yes, and get away again long before you get back," said Tim Reardon. "He'll just take and tangle that line all up around the rocks and sticks at the bottom, and break it." "I'm going to try, anyway," she insisted. They turned in at the path leading to the girl's home presently, and she went in with the pickerel. "I'll dig some bait for you while you're gone," called Tim. "I can do it," she said. "Oh, you're all dressed up," said Tim, who had noted her unusual appearance, clad as she was in her new bright sailor-suit. "Going to change it," she said, "Had to put it on to go to Benton in." She went into the house, and Tim Reardon, seizing a spade that he found leaning against the shed, made his way to a corner of the house, where an old water-spout came down, from the gutter that caught the rain on the roof. He was turning up the soil there when the girl reappeared. "Oh, that isn't the place to dig," she said. "I never dig for worms there." "Well, here's the place to find 'em," asserted Tim. "I'm getting some. You always find angleworms where the ground's moist. They like it, because the rain comes down off the roof here. There you are, grab that fat fellow." The girl made a grab at a bit of the soft earth, where a worm was wriggling back into its hole.