the house never passed from drawing- to dining-room
without an anxious tap. While the maids were doing their
ante-breakfast work I myself stole down and consulted it, opened the
front door, studied the sky, and noted the drift of the clouds. I make
my forecast at once if the tokens are depressing. But I had ere this
seen the river. One of my bedroom windows gave direct outlook upon a
shrubbery, the most notable feature of which was a maple of most
brilliant tints, varying from bright red to faint orange; the other
framed a landscape picture of park, grassland, woods, and the broad
Tweed sweeping round towards the lower portion of the water for which
the angler cares. There was, however, another view from the front of
the house--a nearer reach where there was a mass of rough water, and a
certain tongue of shingle thrust out from the further bank. For days
and weeks these river marks had warned the anxious inquirers that they
might not expect sport. The diminution of the tongue of land on the
one side, and a blur in the pure white of the foam on the other, told
the one-word tale "waxing."

At the outset I was saved any anxiety by finding the river dirty.
Travelling through the night, I had turned out at Berwick at half-past
four in the morning in the cold of a roaring gale that sent the clouds
flying express over the moon, and shrieked into every corner of the
deserted station. There had been heavy rain, and, in short, when day
broke bleakly near upon six o'clock, and I caught my first sight of the
river from the early train to Coldstream, my fate was evident. In good
order on Sunday afternoon, the Tweed was in flood when I drove over the
bridge on Monday morning before the village was awake. Not for the
first time, therefore, the kindly welcome of host and hostess was
pointed with mutual condolences.

The October casts, so far, had been disappointing below Kelso. The
Tweed anglers above that town had been more favoured, being beyond the
malign influences of the Teviot, which has a wonderful facility for
gathering up anything that comes from the clouds, and sending down dirt
and volume to the beats eastward of the Kelso Tweedometer.

The records of a week such as this was to be are not worth telling, for
men neither like to write about their own disappointments unless they
can treat them from the comic side, nor to read about the woes of
others unless they have the unhappy gift of gloating over them. Let
th