CHAPTER IV.
WHEN THE KINGFISHER AND THE BLACK BASS CAME HOME "Crimminy, but you are slow." Jimmy made the statement, not as one voices a newly discovered fact, but as one iterates a time-worn truism.
He sat on a girder of the Limberlost bridge, and scraped the black muck from his boots in a little heap.

Then he twisted a stick into the top of his rat sack, preparatory to his walk home.

The ice had broken on the river, and now the partners had to separate at the bridge, each following his own line of traps to the last one, and return to the bridge so that Jimmy could cross to reach home.

Jimmy was always waiting, after the river opened, and it was a remarkable fact to him that as soon as the ice was gone his luck failed him.

This evening the bag at his feet proved by its bulk that it contained just about one-half the rats Dannie carried.
"I must set my traps in my own way," answered Dannie calmly.