12 PEPACTON 



in the pools shallowed to a few feet and began to 

 hurry toward the rifts: they were low mounds of 

 small stones, as if a bushel or more of large pebbles 

 had been dumped upon the river bottom; occasion- 

 ally they were so near the surface as to make a big 

 ripple. The eel attaches itself to the stones by its 

 mouth, and thus moves them at will. An old fish- 

 erman told me that a strong man could not pull a 

 large lamprey loose from a rock to which it had 

 attached itself. It fastens to its prey in this way, 

 and sucks the life out. A friend of mine says he 

 once saw in the St. Lawrence a pike as long as his 

 arm with a lamprey eel attached to him. The fish 

 was nearly dead and was quite white, the eel had 

 so sucked out his blood and substance. The fish, 

 when seized, darts against rocks and stones, and 

 tries in vain to rub the eel off, then succumbs to 

 the sucker. 



"The lampers do not all die," said Denny, "be- 

 cause they do not all spawn ; " and I observed that 

 the dead ones were all of one size and doubtless 

 of the same age. 



The lamprey is the octopus, the devil-fish, of these 

 waters, and there is, perhaps, no tragedy enacted 

 here that equals that of one of these vampires slowly 

 sucking the life out of a bass or a trout. 



My boys went to school part of the time. Did 

 they have a good teacher? 



"Good enough for me," said Johnny. 



" Good enough for me, " echoed Denny. 



Just below Bark-a-boom — the name is worth 



