[Illustration: WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE DARK]

This is a likely place for fish, and I put my rod together and cast my
flies, dropping them as lightly as a thistledown, and using all my
skill, but no trout rise to my lure; this is evidently their day off,
or my flies are too palpable a subterfuge to tempt a self-respecting
trout.

Sitting on a log, one end of which projects over the stream, I watch a
dragon-fly, or darning needle, float over the water, his flight so
swift my eyes can hardly follow it. At last it stops in front of me,
perfectly poised for a second, but with wings in rapid motion, then
darts away to perform its acrobatic feat of standing on its head on a
lilypad, or to feast on the gnats and other insects that it captures
while on the wing. Truly it is rightly named a dragon.

The whirligig-beetles, those social little black fellows, gather in
large numbers and chase each other round and round in graceful curves,
skating over the water as if enjoying a game of tag.

Leaving the beetles at their game, I come to a place where the brook
seems to hesitate on the brink of a mimic waterfall, as if afraid to
take the dive, but like a boy unwilling to take a dare, it plunges
over the brink to the pool below, with gurgling laughter, in a perfect
ecstasy of bravado.

A leaf drops from an overhanging bough, falling so lightly that it
barely makes a ripple, then sails away like a mimic ship to far-off
ports, dancing along at every caprice of the fitful current; only to
be stranded at last, cast away like a shipwrecked galleon, on some