'BY STREAM AND RIVERA 175 



not so very long before I was once more on the 

 move. The other members of the colony began to 

 find their way along the ropes in such numbers 

 that the inhabitants of the house-boat were driven to 

 undertake a crusade, and those of us who survived 

 became wanderers upon the face of the earth once 

 more. We haunted the merry banks of the river 

 till the approach of autumn began to gild the 

 fields, and then we gradually worked our way in- 

 land, and betook ourselves again to the harvest-fields 

 and the stacks. My old gray-nosed friend never 

 left the river. A unique fate befell him, for he 

 was snapped up one evening by a monstrous trout 

 as he swam across a quiet backwater. It was no 

 pike that took him, for I saw the spots. I could 

 not help getting all too good a view of them, as we 

 were swimming side by side, he and I, when the 

 evil giant chose the bigger and the tougher victim. 

 From the earliest days Fate seems to have deter- 

 mined that solitude should be my lot, and I am 

 not ungrateful, for in this, as in other cases, the 

 death of a friend has meant the life of me. We 

 cannot all be solitary survivors, and I am quite 

 content when the lot falls upon me to remain. 



