noon
Tom Harris and Bob White knew it as canoeists ; but Tim Reardon , following the ins and outs of its shores for miles above the Ellison dam , knew every little turn and twist in its shore . He knew the places where the pickerel hid ; where the water was swift , or shallow , or choked with weeds , and where to leave the shore and make a detour through the grain fields past these places . There were deep pools where the pickerel seldom rose to the troll , but asked to have their dinner sent down to them in the form of a fresh shiner ; and Tim Reardon knew these pools , and when to remove the troll and put on his sinker and live bait . He could have told you every inch of the country between Ellison 's dam and the falls four miles above ; where you would find buckwheat fields ; where the corn patches were ; where apple orchards bordered them ; where the groves of beech-trees were , with the red squirrel colonies in the stumps near-by ; and where the best place was to pause for noon luncheon , in the shade of some pines , where there was a spring bubbling up cool on the hottest days , in which you could set a bottle of coffee and have it icy cold in a half-hour . There were big hemlocks along the way , in the rotted parts of which the yellow-hammers built their nests and laid their white eggs ; hard trees to climb , with their huge trunks . He knew the time to scale the tall pines where the crows built , to find the scrawny young birds , with wide-open mouths and skinny bodies , that looked like birds visited by famine . He knew where the red columbines blossomed on the face of some tall cliffs , where the stream flowed through a rocky gorge ; and how to crawl painfully down a zigzag course from the top to gather these , at the risk of falling seventy feet to the rocks below .