The Glass Village by Ellery Queen

and the big ones bite early.”
    They hiked up Shinn Road in the dawn with their fishing gear and a camping outfit, the Judge insisting they make a day of it. Or as much of a day as the threatening skies would allow.
    â€œWhen a man gets to be as old as I am,” observed the Judge, “half a day is better than none.”
    Each carried a gun, taken from a locked commode drawer in the Judge’s bedroom, where the weapons lay wrapped in oily rags among boxes of ammunition. The old jurist frowned on hunting for sport; he had his property severely posted to protect the pheasant and deer. But he considered chuck, rabbit, and such pests fair game. “When the fishing runs out we’ll go after some. They’re thick up around there. Come down into the valley and play hob with the farms. Maybe we’ll get a bead on some fox. They’ve done a lot of damage this year.” He had issued to Johnny a 20-gauge double for the rabbits, reserving to himself what he called his “varmint rifle.” It was a .22 caliber handloader designed to play a little hob of its own, the Judge said ferociously, with the damn woodchucks. And he sighed, wishing old Pokey were trotting along to heel. Pocahontas had been the Judge’s last hunting dog, a red setter bitch whose tenderly framed photograph hung on his study wall. Johnny had seen her grave in the woods behind the garage.
    â€œPokey and I had some fine times in the woods,” Judge Shinn said happily.
    â€œHunting the butterflies, no doubt,” grinned Johnny.
    The Judge flushed and mumbled something about all that foolishness being dead and buried.
    So the day began peacefully, nothing marring their pleasure but the closing sky. They netted some peepers for live bait and went out in the old flatbottomed boat the Judge had had carted up to the pond the week before, and they fished for largemouthed bass and were successful beyond their dreams. Then they hauled the boat up on shore and did some steel-rod casting for pickerel, and they caught not only pickerel in plenty but a couple of husky trout, at which the Judge declared gleefully the coming of the millennium, for Peepers Pond had been considered fished out of trout, he said, for years.
    â€œDid I croak some twaddle yesterday about premonitions?” he chortled. “False prophet!”
    Then they made camp on the edge of the pond, broiled their trout and swallowed the delectable flesh along with their pond-cooled beer and Millie Pangman’s oatmeal bread, and Johnny brewed he-man’s coffee while the Judge cut open the ambrosial currant pie Aunt Fanny Adams had sent over by little Cynthia Hackett the evening before; and they stuffed themselves and were in heaven.
    Whereupon the Judge said drowsily, “Don’t feel a bit like snuffing out life. Hang the chucks,” and he spread his poncho and dropped off like a small boy after a picnic.
    So Johnny lay down and did likewise, hoping this time he wouldn’t dream the one about the ten thousand men in yellow blanket-uniforms all shooting at him with the Russian guns in their yellow hands.
    And that was how the rain caught them, two innocents fast asleep and soaked to the skin before they could scramble to their feet.
    â€œI’m running true to form,” gasped Johnny. “Did I ever tell you I’m a jinx?”
    It was a few seconds past two o’clock by the Judge’s watch, and they huddled under a big beech peering at the sky and trying to determine its long range intentions. The woods about the pond crackled and trembled under lightning bolts; one struck not a hundred feet away.
    â€œRather be drowned on the road than electrocuted under a tree,” shouted the Judge. “Let’s get out of here!”
    They turned the boat over, hastily gathered their gear, and ran for the road.
    They pushed against a curtain of water, squishing along heads down at a steady pace. At two-thirty by the Judge’s watch