VI. _Between the Lupin and the Laurel_ 139

VII. _Little Red Tom_ 177

VIII. _Silverhorns_ 193

IX. _Notions about Novels_ 221

X. _Some Remarks on Gulls_ 233

XI. _Leviathan_ 271

XII. _The Art of Leaving Off_ 309

ILLUSTRATIONS

_Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily
or lazily_ Frontispiece

Facing page

_On such a carry travel is slow_ 36

_A notion to go down stream struck the salmon_ 88

_There was the gleam of an immense mass of silver in
its meshes_ 94

_Tannery Combe, Holford_ 126

"_Billy began to call, and it was beautiful_" 206

_There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart_ 218

_She took the oars and rowed me slowly around the shore_ 266

DAYS OFF

"A day off" said my Uncle Peter, settling down in his chair before the
open wood-fire, with that air of complacent obstinacy which spreads
over him when he is about to confess and expound his philosophy of
life,--"a day off is a day that a man takes to himself."

"You mean a day of luxurious solitude," I said, "a stolen sweet of
time, which he carries away into some hidden corner to enjoy alone,--a
little-Jack-Horner kind of a day?"

"Not at all," said my Uncle Peter; "solitude is a thing which a man
hardly ever enjoys by himself. He may practise it from a sense of duty.
Or he may take refuge in it from other things that are less tolerable.
But nine times out of ten he will find that he can't get a really good
day to himself unless he shares it with some one else; if he takes it
alone, it will be a heavy day, a chain-and-ball day,--anything but a
day off."

"Just what do you mean, then?" I asked, knowing that nothing would
please him better than the chance to discover his own meaning against a
little background of apparent misunderstanding and opposition.

"I mean," said my Uncle Peter, in that deliberate manner which lends a
flavour of deep wisdom to the most obvious