y of the important. By the river report of last Saturday I see
that Lord Northcliffe (who will always be Alfred Harmsworth to the
republic of the pen, and who always has been a keen and travelled
angler) has been rewarded with four salmon, and congratulate while I
envy him. In truth, it was this statement in the report that forced me
to forget this miserable weather by catching my first springer over
again as fondly remembered.

The seeker for the springer has not a little call upon endurance, not
the least being in the uncertainty of the conditions. How well I know
what it means on those beats above Perth when in sleet and gale the
river is 15 ft. above the normal, flooding the Inch levels at the
beginning of the season, as happened in the early days of this season.
In my case the uncertainty was so felt and protracted before starting
on my journey. You can understand probably that the feeling of the man
who is ready for the summons, yet who is put off by telegrams and
letters day after day, gets at last beyond longing; it works up into a
sort of innocent fury. An old angler, hampered for many a season, and
finding freedom at last, consoles himself with the reflection that
passion, too much intenseness about such a matter, will trouble his
philosophy never more. Yet one morning he is swept off his feet. A
kindly friend has days of salmon fishing for him; fish have run up and
are plentiful; he need but wait the signal, and go. What, in all
reasonable conscience, could be nicer? But how true it is that there
is nothing in life so certain as its uncertainty! Day succeeds day in
the customary fashion, and the expected summons cometh not. Those days
on fine beats that were set apart for you pass in flood; you tick them
off as materials for the book you mean to write on "Chances that I have
Missed."

"She rose 2 ft. yesterday, but better wait," had wired my friend, and
in due time I find that on that very day the man who took my place
killed three fish. When I hastened down to the bridge on my arrival to
see how she was, the river, which had risen strongly as soon as that
three-hour, three-salmon man had got off the beat, had fallen to a
point between impossibilities and chances. And the wind had slewed
round from south-west to west, with a flirting to north. Here was
another day, if not lost, certainly without fishing.

Having looked at the river and read my fate in the heavy stream--a
mighty race of water,