, and that by the Stell net, which was worse; but to
describe these obsolete instruments is unnecessary, and might be
tedious. There was also the Pout net, an implement somewhat like a very
large landing-net, wherewith a man might readily whip many a fish out of
flooded water. That, however, need not be considered as in these days a
serious form of poaching.

Of all poachers of salmon, perhaps that one with whom one is least out
of sympathy was the man--is he now extinct, one wonders?--who, fishing
with trout-rod and fly, and bearing on his back the most modest of trout
creels, instantly, when he came to a likely cast for a fish, was wont to
change his trout fly for a salmon one. If he hooked a salmon and a
watcher appeared on the scene, invariably the fish "broke" him. If no
watcher put in an appearance, generally the angler found that he had
sudden and pressing business at home, and that fish left the riverside
snugly smuggled inside the lining of a coat, or in a great circular
pocket made for the purpose. It was such an one that, nigh on a hundred
years ago, Mr. Scrope caught red-handed one day on his rented salmon
water near Melrose. The man was a guileless creature from Selkirk, too
innocent, it appeared, to be able to account for the salmon flies in the
inside of his dilapidated hat, or for the 10 lb. salmon reposing in his
pocket.

"Dodd! I jalouse it's mebbes luppen in whan I was wadin' the watter," he
said with artless smile. "They're gey queer beasts, fish."

Still to this day there may perhaps be found instances where they have
"luppen in" to a too capacious pocket; for the nature of the salmon has
not changed, and they are still "gey queer," and are found occasionally
in "gey queer" places. There was, one remembers, not so long ago, a
certain boy from Eton, or from some other of the great public schools,
who, with a sister, wandered one lowering autumn evening by the brown
waters of a Border stream. And how it happened there is none to say,
save those who dimly saw it, but there came a vision of a water-bailiff,
scant of breath, pounding heavily across the fields, whilst a maiden,
fleet of foot, sped away through the gloom, sore handicapped by the
antics of a half-dead and wholly slippery fish that nothing would induce
to stay inside her jacket. And whether she won free, I know not. But it
is said there was salmon steak for breakfast next morning in that
maiden's home.

Surely the devil played but an ama