e moderate and mackintoshes remain
unstrapped.

The two points of congratulation were (1) that the pool was in perfect
height and colour; and (2) that the light was good. The first
condition was satisfactory for Grey, the angler, the second for Brown,
the kodakeer. And herein lurks a necessity for explanation. Grey had
one evening, at the Fly Fishers' Club, been much impressed with a
violent tirade from a member about the generally incorrect way in which
the ordinary black and white artist illustrates the fisherman in
action, and had listened attentively as a group round the fire argued
themselves into the conclusion that there was much more to be done with
the photographic snapshot in angling than had ever yet been attempted.
He looked about for a man of leisure who was an enthusiast with the
camera, and skilful enough to get his living with it, should fate ever
drive him to earning his bread and cheese. Such an amateur he at
length discovered in Brown, and these were the two who, by nine o'clock
in the morning, were at the head of the Rowan Pool; their plans
prearranged in every detail; both men in excellent form, head, body,
and spirit; and Burdock, the keeper, resigned to the innovation of
photography which he sniffingly flouted as a piece of downright
tomfoolery.

There was another character in the comedy of the day, a salmon fisher
of some repute for skill, but disliked for his selfishness, cynicism,
and overbearing assumption of mastership in the theory and practice of
fishing. As he was ever laying down the highest standards of sport
much was forgiven him. The men who used phantom, prawn, and worm,
however much and often they were made to writhe under his sneers, felt
that in maintaining the artificial fly as the only lure with which the
noble salmon should be tempted, he was on a lofty plane, and, if not
unassailable, had better be left there in his vain glory. They loved
him none the more, of course, and spun, prawned, and wormed as before,
honestly envying just a little the purist whose fly undoubtedly often
justified his claims. His beat was a mile higher up the river than the
Rowan Pool, and he is here introduced because on this morning Grey and
Brown gave him a lift in their wagonette, and dropped him at the larch
plantation so that he might, by the short cut of a woodland path,
attain the hut in the middle of his beat. Before climbing over the
stile he exhibited the big fly which he had selecte