A LONELY LAKE . 
41 
malice of the white man spoiled it. A man who 
had a grudge against those who most enjoyed 
trout-fishing in the lake caught a pailful of horn- 
pout and turned them into the green waters. 
They multiplied, and now legions of them move 
their hideous bodies back and forth through the 
swaying weeds beneath its surface. They never 
grow large, but their numbers are appalling. 
Sometimes when, in a still summer evening, the 
surface of the lake is unruffled by wind, and 
myriads of small insects have fallen upon the 
water, the pout appear in countless multitudes, 
swimming so that their horns or tails show above 
the water. 
The tadpoles also are extraordinarily numer¬ 
ous at some seasons, and they, too, have a way 
of coming to the top of the water and contem¬ 
plating the upper world, to which they hope some 
day rightfully to attain. A sudden stamp of 
the foot upon the shore will cause hundreds of 
these floating polywogs to splash into foam the 
water over half the surface of the lake. The 
painted tortoise lives in the lake, but no other 
creature of his kind is found near it. In fact, 
I have never seen the spotted turtle in the Bear- 
camp valley. I once dug seventeen painted 
turtles out of one hole in the mud on the west¬ 
ern edge of the lake, where they had crowded 
for some reason of their own. 
