Long, copious draughts they drank; and it was not until they had quenched their thirst that they really noticed how shrunken the brook was.  Instead of the deep, rushing mountain stream they had seen when last they visited the spot, they now found but a slender rivulet that flowed quietly along the middle of the stream bed, leaving bare, bordering ribbons of stony bottom along its margins.  Nowhere did the water seem to reach from bank to bank, excepting where some obstruction in the stream bed dammed the current back.  Like the forest, the brook was also a sorrowful picture.  But there was this difference.  The forest was dead, whereas the brook, though feeble, still lived.

The full significance of the shrunken stream did not strike the two boys until they had traveled for some distance up the bank of the run.  Presently they came to a spot they recognized as a favorite trout-hole.  A great boulder jutted out from one bank, while opposite it, on the other shore, stood or had stood, a mammoth hemlock.  These obstructions had formed a little pool, and the current had eaten away much earth from beneath the roots of the great tree, forming an ideal lurking place for trout.  And in this dark, deep, secure retreat great fish had lived since time immemorial.  More than one huge trout had the two chums taken here.  Never was the pool without its giant occupant, for when one big fellow was caught another moved in to take his place, the run being fully stocked from year to year by the smaller fishes from the spring brooks, like the vanished rivulet above.  But now no trout hid under the hemlock’s roots.  They stood high and dry, while the puny stream that trickled beneath them would hardly have covered a minnow.  The two boys looked at each other in dismay.

“You don’t suppose the entire stream is like that, do you, Lew?” asked Charley.  “There won’t be a trout in it if it is.”  Then, after a pause, he added:  “What in the world do you suppose has become of the trout, anyway?”

His question was soon answered, at least in part.  Continuing along the bank of the run, the boys presently came to one of the deepest pools in the stream.  In the crystal water they could see many trout, for there were no hiding-places in the pool at this low stage of water.  Some of the fish were large.  At the approach of the boys the frightened trout darted frantically about in the pool, vainly seeking cover.

Around the margins of this pool were innumerable little tracks in the earth.  “Raccoons!” exclaimed Lew.  “There must have been dozens of them here.”

But not until he found some little piles of fish-bones near the farther end of the pool did he grasp the significance of the tracks.  He stopped in amazement.

“Look here, Charley,” he called, pointing to the piles of fish-bones.  “Those coons have been catching and eating trout.”  Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “If this stream is like this in April, what will it be in August?  There will be hardly a drop of water or a trout left.  Why, this brook is ruined for years as a trout-stream—­maybe forever.  And it used to be absolutely the finest trout-stream in this part of the mountains.”