78 Wilderness Ways. 



moment came. Tighter and tighter he hugged ; the 

 big frog's eyes seemed bursting from his head, and 

 his mouth was forced slowly open. Then his savage 

 opponent lunged upon him with his weight, and 

 forced his head under water to finish him. 



The whole thing seemed scarcely more startling 

 to the luckless big frog than to the watcher in the 

 canoe. It was all so brutal, so deliberately planned ! 

 The smaller frog, knowing that he was no match for 

 the other in strength, had waited cunningly till he 

 was all absorbed in the red fly, and then stole upon 

 him, intending to finish him first and the little red 

 thing afterwards. He would have done it too; for 

 the big frog was at his last gasp, when I interfered 

 and put them both in my net. 



Meanwhile a third frog had come walloping over 

 the lily pads from somewhere out of sight, and 

 grabbed the fly while the other two were fighting 

 about it. It was he who first showed me a curious 

 frog trick. When I lifted him from the water on the 

 end of my line, he raised his hands above his head, as 

 if he had been a man, and grasped the line, and tried 

 to lift himself, hand over hand, so as to take the 

 strain from his mouth. And I could never catch 

 another frog like that. 



Next morning, as I went to the early fishing, Chig- 



