214 NATURE STUDY. 



One day, when Pike was still living among the lily-pads 

 and catching wrigglers, a shoal of very small minnows 

 came that way. None was more than an inch long. Just 

 as Pike was wishing he was a little bigger, so that he 

 might have his first fish dinner, something happened that 

 startled him. He was almost always being startled, any- 

 way. It must be trying to one's nerves to live in the wa- 

 ter. 



The minnows had all been headed up stream ; but in- 

 stead of going on, they moved their tails just enough to 

 hold themselves against the current, as shoals of minnows 

 often do. One was resting right over the trap of a drag- 

 on-fly nymph, when the trap shut up. The little fellow 

 struggled hard, but the strong jaws would not let go, and 

 it was soon all over with him. The other minnows swam 

 away in a hurry. Pike edged over to the other side of the 

 brook and lay perfectly still at the surface of the water, 

 over the clean sand and in the bright sun. 



Pike had reason to be afraid of mudholes, and to dread 

 the deep water of the brook, but he would have made his 

 voyage quite as safely if he had dashed boldly across. For 

 he and the dragon-fly nymph had one thing in common be- 

 sides their big appetite. The nymph could thrust out or 

 bring in its lower lip so quickly that no one, if looking 

 ever so sharply, could see the movement ; Pike could dart 

 so swiftly that, while he was little, he could not be seen. 



This was because it takes a little time, perhaps half a 

 second, for the eye to be fixed upon an object so that it 

 can see, or change and then be fixed so as to see again. 

 Pike, before he grew to be too big, might be seen in one 

 place and a minute after be found in another, without hav- 

 ing been seen to move at all. 



It was a pleasant afternoon ; Pike was lying in the sun 

 near some scattering blades of sedge-grass that had come 

 up through the sand ; a boy and girl came to the brook to 



