the way. I was so
absorbed in my work that I did not know I was moving into deep water
till I found that my wading stockings had filled. I then stopped, and,
lengthening my line at each successive "throw," sent my fly nearer and
still nearer to the grilse.

How I managed the long, straight cast that presently resulted in my fly
passing down the "hover," I do not know. The grilse rose sharply at the
lure, but I "struck" too late. I reeled in my line, and after a few
minutes began once more to cast. Now, however, try as I might, I could
not get the line out to the distance required; it would not fall
straight and true. In desperation I endeavoured to overcome the
difficulty by sheer strength. I swung my arms aloft; my old hickory rod
creaked and groaned with the increasing strain, then snapped immediately
the tension was released with the return of the line; and, a second
afterwards, the grilse took my fly and bolted away down-stream.

All caution left me; I was "into a fish"--that was enough. In haste to
catch my rod-top as it slipped down the line from the butt, I made one
step forward, and fell over head and ears into a deep hole beneath the
shelf of rock on which I had been standing. When I recognised what had
happened I was clinging to an alder-root near the bank; thence,
breathless, I lifted myself till I was safe on a tree-trunk above the
pool. My rod and cap were drifting rapidly away; but, after divesting
myself of half my dripping garments, I recovered the rod in a backwater
below the neighbouring wood. All my line had been taken out, the gut
collar had been snapped, and the fly had undoubtedly been carried off
by the grilse.

In those old days of which I have elsewhere written,[1] Ianto and I
often resorted to the wide, deep pool under the farm. Sometimes, during
summer, we were there before daybreak, fishing for the salmon that only
then or in the dusk would deign to inspect our "Dandy" fly. And there,
in the summer nights, we frequently captured, with the natural minnow,
the big trout that wandered from the rapids to feed in the quiet waters
by the alders. Ianto knew the pool so well that even in the darkest
night he would wade along the slippery, weed-grown shelf near the raging
fall, to troll in the shadows above him. Had the old man taken one false
step he would have entered on a struggle for life compared with which my
own adventure after hooking the grilse would have been insignificant.

For several