He certainly makes more of the job than the small wages he gets from the town; and in years past the alewives have had a defender in him at Town Meeting, when discussion came up about the amount of money allotted to the Herring Brook. From a naturalist’s point of view, he can hardly be said to have much sentiment in him about these fish as part of the living community. Too many of them would stink the place up, or so he affirms. I remember him at a hearing, speaking to a public official in this wise, “Ever see my brook? Our brook, I mean. No dirty, stinking mess up there!” So, in his special way, he keeps the area clean, and is the herring’s defender and interpreter. I think he likes to conceive of himself as a kind of rascal. To those who ask him about the fish he is liable to dispense information that is an outrage to the innocent. Two Connecticut schoolteachers were once directed to the run, and came away saying the alewives were often so plentiful that the Cape Codders shingled their houses with them. (This is part of what he has called “My fight with the public.”) So, a “Cape Cod character,” personification of an old locality ... but I don’t think he would like me to write too well of his character. That day as I lingered at the run he gave me a lowering look. What was I interested in the fish for? Well, if I’d take the information from him, we could make ourselves a pile of money by selling the story to _Collier’s_ magazine. Did I ever hear about the Indians shooting these fish from the trees? Facts, Harry. Facts. “Well, naow, I’ll tell you. With the shore wind blowing on the long flats out there and the water ruffling up like that, the fish don’t come in much. But they’ll be along. Yes-yes.” So was there nothing to do but take tentative steps and wait? The scene, the place, the weather--an emergent weather in me perhaps--was more compelling than that. The wind blowing, brook roaring, sun shafts through the steely sky, all urged an opening. I walked down to the south side of the road, by the tall lilacs, under high willows and maple trees. Here the waters of the brook divide between the concrete fishway and a side or “waste” stream which rejoins the other some fifty feet farther on, dropping precipitously over rocks that foam with water too high for the migrating fish to leap.