the bottom. He threw
his fishing coat off, rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt,
and, lying on his side, felt about the bank and tried to reach
the bottom but couldn't. So, hearing the half-hour bell ring, he
deferred further inquiry, and stripped in silent disgust for a
plunge in the pool. Three times he hurled himself into the
delicious rush of the cold chalk stream, with that utter abandon
in which man, whose bones are brittle, can only indulge when
there are six or seven feet of water between him and mother
earth; and, letting the stream bear him away at its own sweet
will to the shallows below, struck up again through the rush and
the roar to his plunging place. Then, slowly and luxuriously
dressing, he lit his short pipe--companion of meditation--and
began to ruminate on the escape of the king fish. What could have
cut his collar? The more he thought, the less he could make it
out. When suddenly he was aware of the keeper on his way back to
the house for orders and breakfast.

"What sport, sir?"

"Pretty fair," said Tom, carelessly, lugging five plump speckled
fellows, weighing some seven and a half pounds, out of his creel,
and laying them out for the keeper's inspection.

"Well, they be in prime order, sir, surely," says the keeper,
handling them; "they allus gets mortal thick across the shoulders
while the May-fly be on. Loose any sir?"

"I put in some little ones up above, and lost one screamer just
up the black ditch there. He must have been a four-pounder, and
went off, and be hanged to him, with two yards of my collar and a
couple of first-rate flies. How on earth he got off I can't
tell!" and he went on to unfold the particulars of the short
struggle.

The keeper could hardly keep down a grin. "Ah, sir," said he, "I
thinks I knows what spwiled your sport. You owes it all to that
chap as I was a telling you of, or my name's not Willum Goddard;"
and then, fishing the lockpole with a hook at the end of it out
of the rushes, he began groping under the bank, and presently
hauled up a sort of infernal machine, consisting of a heavy lump
of wood, a yard or so long, in which were carefully inserted the
blades of four or five old knives and razors, while a crop of
rusty jagged nails filled up the spare space.

Tom looked at it in wonder. "What devil's work have you got hold
of there?" he said at last.

"Bless you, sir," said the keeper, "'tis only our shove net traps
as I was a telling you of. I ke