"He's found him!" whispered Kate. "Let's keep still!" Nothing happened for some minutes; then we saw Addison's head appear among the brush, as if to look around. For some time he stood there, still as a mouse, peering about and listening. Evidently he suspected that some one was with the dog, most likely Thomas, and that he had gone to the mill-pond to fish; but we were not more than fifty feet away, lying up in the thick pine brush. After looking and listening for a long while, Addison drew back into the thicket, but soon reappeared with two large trout, and was hurrying away down the brook when we all shouted, "Oho!" Addison stopped, looking both sheepish and wrathful; but we pounced on him, laughing so much that he was compelled to own up that he was beaten. He showed us the hole--after we had crept into the thicket--and the ledge where he had sat so many times to fish. "But there are only four more big trout," he said. "I meant to leave them here, and put in twenty smaller ones to grow up." The girls thought it best to do so, and Halstead and I agreed to the plan; but three or four days later, when Theodora, Ellen and Addison went over to see the hole again, we found that the four large trout had disappeared. We always suspected that Thomas caught them, or that he told the Murch boys or Alfred Batchelder of the hole. Yet an otter may possibly have found it. In May, two years afterward, Halstead and I caught six very pretty half-pound trout there, but no one since has ever found such a school of beauties as Addison discovered. CHAPTER XXI TOM'S FORT During the next week there was what is termed by Congregationalists a "Conference Meeting," at the town of Hebron, distant fifteen miles from the Old Squire's. Gram and he made it a rule to attend these meetings; and on this occasion they set off on Monday afternoon with old Sol and the light driving wagon, in Sunday attire, and did not return till the following Monday. Wealthy went with them; but the rest of us young folks were left, with many instructions, to keep house and look after things at the farm. Haying was now over; and the wheat and barley were in; but an acre more of late-sown oats still remained to be harvested, also an acre of buckwheat. There was not a little solicitude felt for this acre of buckwheat. With it were connected visions of future buckwheat cakes and maple sirup. I was assured by Ellen and the others who had come to the farm in advance of me, that the maple molasses and candy "flapjacks," made on pans of hard snow, during the previous spring, had been something to smack one's mouth for. The Old Squire had bidden Addison, who was practically in charge, to mow the oats on Tuesday, and the buckwheat on Thursday, if the weather continued good. Asa Doane was coming to assist us. The oats were to be turned on Wednesday and drawn in on Friday. The buckwheat would need to lie in the swath till the next week and be turned once or twice, in order to cure properly.