Tom laid his bones to it, shinning up as fast as he could, and dragging up his rod after him.  He had just time to reach and crouch along upon a huge branch some ten feet up, which stretched out over the river, when the keeper arrived at the clump.  Tom’s heart beat fast as he came under the tree; two steps more and he would have passed, when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleam on the scales of the dead fish caught his eye, and he made a dead point at the foot of the tree.  He picked up the fish one by one; his eye and touch told him that they had been alive and feeding within the hour.  Tom crouched lower along the branch, and heard the keeper beating the clump.  “If I could only get the rod hidden,” thought he, and began gently shifting it to get it alongside of him; “willowtrees don’t throw out straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck.”  Alas! the keeper catches the rustle, and then a sight of the rod, and then of Tom’s hand and arm.

“Oh, be up ther’, be ’ee?” says he, running under the tree.  “Now you come down this minute.”

“Tree’d at last,” thinks Tom, making no answer, and keeping as close as possible, but working away at the rod, which he takes to pieces.  “I’m in for it, unless I can starve him out.”  And then he begins to meditate getting along the branch for a plunge, and scramble to the other side; but the small branches are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult, that the keeper will have lots of time to get round by the ford before he can get out, so he gives that up.  And now he hears the keeper beginning to scramble up the trunk.  That will never do; so he scrambles himself back to where his branch joins the trunk; and stands with lifted rod.

“Hullo, Velveteens; mind your fingers if you come any higher.”

The keeper stops and looks up, and then with a grin says, “Oh! be you, be it, young measter?  Well, here’s luck.  Now I tells ’ee to come down at once, and ’t’ll be best for ’ee.”

“Thank ’ee, Velveteens; I’m very comfortable,” said Tom, shortening the rod in his hand, and preparing for battle.

“Werry well; please yourself,” says the keeper, descending, however, to the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank.  “I bean’t in no hurry, so you may take your time.  I’ll l’arn ’ee to gee honest folk names afore I’ve done with ’ee.”

“My luck as usual,” thinks Tom; “what a fool I was to give him a black!  If I’d called him ‘keeper,’ now, I might get off.  The return match is all his way.”

The keeper quietly proceeded to take out his pipe, fill, and light it, keeping an eye on Tom, who now sat disconsolately across the branch, looking at keeper—­a pitiful sight for men and fishes.  The more he thought of it the less he liked it.  “It must be getting near second calling-over,” thinks he.  Keeper smokes on stolidly.  “If he takes me up, I shall be flogged safe enough.  I can’t sit here all night.  Wonder if he’ll rise at silver.”