THE BULLY OF THE OSWEGATCHIE 247 



guarded for an instant and it was all over. Once 

 the Bully had set his teeth into the white throat he 

 shook and raged and tore while the life-blood of his 

 foe gushed out, and the denizens of the pond saw 

 their supposedly invincible warrior die before their 

 eyes. 



Nothing is known, certainly, of the Bully's life 

 after this up to the day that he met his death. It 

 is whispered that before leaving the pond he under- 

 took to capture a white miller that came fluttering 

 over the surface of the water just at dusk one night 

 and found himself fast at the end of a line as in 

 his boyhood. Some even assume to say that after 

 vainly flinging himself into the air in the effort 

 to shake the miller out of his mouth, he said good- 

 bye to those who had been drawn about him by his 

 struggles, and was about ready to give up hope 

 when one last struggle took him over and under a 

 root and he found himself free. They even go so 

 far as to say that for many a day after that the 

 miller stuck to the Bully's jaw, and that from it 

 floated a fine, white thread. 



Another unsupported rumour has it that as he 

 was going up stream one day in a narrow part of 

 the stream he found a fine bunch of branches and 

 leaves, and gladly pushed in among them when he 

 heard a disturbance in the water back of him. No 

 sooner had he entered this refuge than it began to 

 rise out of the water, and he shortly found himself 

 on shore and being handled by an animal that re- 



