two days after the meeting in John Hammond's shop
the parties met at Houghton, and the first of many foregatherings took
place that day in the well-remembered Sheep-bridge hut--Marryat,
Francis, Carlisle ("South-West"), and Halford. Halford had rooms in
the neighbourhood, and, in his own words, there this historical
quartette would "hold triangular fishing colloquies," "South-West"
having his home up the river at Stockport. Francis was the first of
the trio to fall out, his last casts being on his beloved Sheep-bridge
shallow. Halford's quarters were now at the mill at Houghton, and it
was my privilege to take Francis Francis's vacant place there, as also
in another place.

What ambrosial nights we had in the homely millhouse after untiring
days with our rods! It was there that I insisted upon my host becoming
a contributor to the _Field_, and he required considerable persuasion.
Indeed, the suggestion roused him into one of his dogmatic
disputations, and he held on tenaciously, till, taking up my bedroom
candle, I said, "Well, I'm off to bed. You've got my opinion and my
advice, and, if you don't write that article you are a so-and-so. Good
night, old chap, sleep on it." Next morning I was taking my
ante-breakfast pipe on a cartwheel in the shed outside, and listening
to the diapason of the mill, when Halford came out. "All right,
sonny," he said, "I'll try it, but candidly I ha'e ma doots." This was
how the first "Detached Badger" article came to appear in the _Field_.
Walsh, the famous "Stonehenge," was editor of the paper then, and he
stuck for a while at the pseudonym which Halford chose. But he was the
best fellow in the world, and very soon good-humouredly gave in and
left it to me. Walsh, nevertheless, would always make merry over that
signature, and used with a twinkle of his eye to ask me whether my
friend the Badger was quite well.

And what a delightful fishing companion the Badger was! Perhaps for
the first two years at Houghton the pleasure was just a little tempered
with one insignificant drawback. I had not then been long a dry-fly
practitioner, and was terribly ashamed for H. to watch me fishing.
'Tis thirty years back, yet I acutely remember my nervousness on that
point. Having got his brace or so of fish, and finished his studies of
water, rise of fly, weeds and weather, and neatly (and oh! so orderly
and accurately!) made his entries in his little notebook, he loved to
play gillie to