apologies begged to be favoured with a view of my document. It turned
out that his request was a favour to me, for it discovered the fact that
I had left my fly-book, with the pink card in it, beside an old mill, a
quarter of a mile up the stream.

Another time I was sitting beside the road, trying to get out of a very
long, wet, awkward pair of wading-stockings, an occupation which is
unfavourable to tranquillity of mind, when a man came up to me in the
dusk and accosted me with an absence of politeness which in German
amounted to an insult.

"Have you been fishing?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Have you any right to fish?"

"What right have you to ask?"

"I am a keeper of the river. Where is your card?"

"It is in my pocket. But pardon my curiosity, where is YOUR card?"

This question appeared to paralyse him. He had probably never been asked
for his card before. He went lumbering off in the darkness, muttering
"My card? Unheard of! MY card!"

The routine of angling at Ischl was varied by an excursion to the Lake
of St. Wolfgang and the Schafberg, an isolated mountain on whose rocky
horn an inn has been built. It stands up almost like a bird-house on
a pole, and commands a superb prospect; northward, across the rolling
plain and the Bavarian forest; southward, over a tumultuous land of
peaks and precipices. There are many lovely lakes in sight; but the
loveliest of all is that which takes its name from the old saint who
wandered hither from the country of the "furious Franks" and built his
peaceful hermitage on the Falkenstein. What good taste some of those old
saints had!

There is a venerable church in the village, with pictures attributed to
Michael Wohlgemuth, and a chapel which is said to mark the spot where
St. Wolfgang, who had lost his axe far up the mountain, found it, like
Longfellow's arrow, in an oak, and "still unbroke." The tree is gone, so
it was impossible to verify the story. But the saint's well is there, in
a pavilion, with a bronze image over it, and a profitable inscription
to the effect that the poorer pilgrims, "who have come unprovided with
either money or wine, should be jolly well contented to find the water
so fine." There is also a famous echo farther up the lake, which repeats
six syllables with accuracy. It is a strange coincidence that there are
just six syllables in the name of "der heilige Wolfgang." But when you
translate it into English, the inspiration of the echo seem