tislaw's, and had, as a matter of course, been taking
up and re-setting night-lines. They had all left the water, and were
sitting or standing about at their toilets, in all costumes, from
a shirt upwards, when they were aware of a man in a velveteen
shooting-coat approaching from the other side. He was a new keeper, so
they didn't recognize or notice him, till he pulled up right opposite,
and began:

"I see'd some of you young gentlemen over this side a-fishing just now."

"Hullo! who are you? What business is that of yours, old Velveteens?"

"I'm the new under-keeper, and master's told me to keep a sharp lookout
on all o' you young chaps. And I tells 'ee I means business, and you'd
better keep on your own side, or we shall fall out."

"Well, that's right, Velveteens; speak out, and let's know your mind at
once."

"Look here, old boy," cried East, holding up a miserable, coarse fish
or two and a small jack; "would you like to smell 'em and see which bank
they lived under?"

"I'll give you a bit of advice, keeper," shouted Tom, who was sitting
in his shirt paddling with his feet in the river: "you'd better go down
there to Swift's, where the big boys are; they're beggars at setting
lines, and'll put you up to a wrinkle or two for catching the
five-pounders." Tom was nearest to the keeper, and that officer, who was
getting angry at the chaff, fixed his eyes on our hero, as if to take a
note of him for future use. Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare,
and then broke into a laugh, and struck into the middle of a favourite
School-house song,--

"As I and my companions
Were setting of a snare
The gamekeeper was watching us;
For him we did not care:
For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
And jump out anywhere.
For it's my delight of a likely night,
In the season of the year."

The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of laughter, and
the keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently bent on mischief. The
boys thought no more of the matter.

But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer weather lay
sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and the green and gray
flies flickered with their graceful, lazy up-and-down flight over
the reeds and the water and the meadows, in myriads upon myriads.
The May-flies must surely be the lotus-eaters of the ephemerae--the
happiest, laziest, carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few
hours of su