Human ears are never so sharp as those of the wood folk who have to live by their wits. So when the Boy from the Valley Farm heard nothing, and saw nothing, he concluded there was nothing there.

But Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, was following him none the less, half fearful and half curious to see what this two-legged creature might be up to in his woods.

It was a pleasant afternoon, with just enough of a haze to subdue the sunlight. The rain had left the earth fresh and green in the open patches, and the air was sweet with the perfume of Steeple Bush and Joe Pye Weed and pink Sweet Clover. From away down by the meadow back of the Farm came the tinkle of a cowbell, the only sound to break the stillness, save the faint lapping of the river against a boulder.

The Boy stopped beside a pool half-shadowed by an overhanging log. His sharp eyes could just make out a big fat trout that lay headed up-stream, lazily fanning the water with his fins, to keep himself in position.

Now Twinkly Eyes, who had concealed himself in a clump of bushes a little downstream, began to see the meaning of the long black pole with the line dangling from the end of it.

First the Boy took a tin can from his pocket, a can with holes punched in the top. Selecting a fat white angle worm, of a sort that the little Black Bear well knew grew in the wet places, he fastened it on his hook and dangled it before the trout. But to no avail! That canny fellow knew perfectly that no such worms of soft fat whiteness were ever found in his stream. The kind of worms he sometimes found when there was a cave-in from the bank were strong, slim black ones.—He refused even to nibble.

The Boy next tried a cricket, then a grasshopper, and finally a fat white grub—but with the same result. Then, quite by chance, he chose a black worm.

But before he cast it, he saw a shining green turtle about as big around as a good-sized crab-apple floating about, just a little upstream. And carefully laying his pole along the bank, he made a grab for the fellow. That roiled the water, and although he didn’t get the turtle, it was one of the luckiest things he could have done. For when he cast his worm into the pool again, the water was so muddy that the old trout thought, of course, the bank had caved in above there, and he made for that black bank-worm as if he had fasted for a week.

A tweak at the line, and the boy was so excited that he swung his fish fully two rods through the air, landing him in the very bush behind which Twinkly Eyes was hiding!

The little Black Bear gave a start of surprise, and for just one instant his head was exposed to the boy’s startled gaze.