ed over with excitement and
incident; indeed, as portrayed in the pages of _Guy Mannering_, they
were, to use Sir Walter's own words, "inexpressibly animating." Such,
for instance, were "burning the water" and "sunning." Others, such as
rake-hooking, cross-lining, and decking salmon out of shallow water,
were mere poaching devices with little redeeming virtue, commending
themselves to nobody, except as a means of filling the pot.

Then there was the taking of salmon from the "redds" as they spawned, of
all methods of capture the least allied to "sport," for the fish then
were soft and flabby, and almost useless as food. Nevertheless, there
was in that, too, a strong element of excitement, for the weapon used,
the clodding or throwing leister, required no mean skill in the using.
This throwing leister was a heavy spear, or rather a heavy "graip,"
having five single-barbed prongs of unequal length but regularly
graduated. To the bar above the shortest prong was lashed a goats'-hair
rope, which was also made fast to the thrower's arm, carefully coiled,
as in a whaling-boat the line is coiled, so that it may run free when
the fish is struck. This leister (or waster) was cast by hand at fish
lying in not too deep water--generally, in fact, when they were on the
spawning beds. It was with this weapon, as one may read in Scrope's
_Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing_, that Tam Purdie--Sir Walter's
Purdie--when a young man captured that "muckle kipper" that seemed to
him to be the "verra de'il himsel'," so big was he. One Sunday forenoon,
as he daundered by the waterside (instead of being, as he should have
been, at church) Tam saw him slide slowly off the redd across the
stream.

"Odd! my verra heart lap to my mouth whan I gat the glisk o' something
mair like a red stirk than ought else muve off the redd. I fand my hair
creep on my heid. I minded it was the Sabbath, and I sudna hae been
there. It micht be a delusion o' the Enemy, if it wasna the de'il
himsel'."

All that peaceful Sabbath day Tam's meditations were disturbed by
visions of great salmon. And as at family worship that night his master
read aloud from "the Word," Tam quaked to realise that no syllable had
penetrated his dulled ears, but that, with the concluding solemn "Amen,"
had come to his mind the resolution to clip the wings of the Sabbath,
and at all costs to capture that fish before anyone could forestall him.
According, as soon as his too ardent mind judge