stands out as my most thrilling episode in Norway.

The more frequent occurrence is a foreshore of shingle, much or little
according to the volume of water, and here wading trousers are
indispensable, and I dare venture to say they are to the majority of
anglers wholly delightful. In waders somehow you feel very good. The
opportunities for wading on many of the large rivers are, however,
limited, the boat being a necessity for both salmon and sea trout. It
is the only way of casting over the fish. The boats are often too
skittish for comfort, though they are never so slight as the Canadian
canoe. You step ashore to finish conclusions with your fish, and when
your gaffsman is a village worthy who leaves his ordinary occupations
to gillie the stranger, accidents are not uncommon. Does one ever
forget the swiping at the cast instead of at the salmon by the honest
fellow who so much tries to please you, or the losses caused by sheer
inexperience or natural stupidity?

The finest sea trout of my life ought to have been lost to me by this
sort of blundering. I had, as I thought, drilled the worthy cobbler at
least into the duty of keeping cool and combining vigour with
deliberation. I was casting from a grassy bank overhung with alders,
and the fish was well hooked on a Bulldog salmon fly. He ran hard and
far down-stream, but was checked in time and reeled slowly up. After a
quarter of an hour's play he was under the rod point, Johan all the
while dancing with the excitement of the keen sportsman. I kept him
off till the fish was spent and feebly gyrating at my feet. Then I
gave the sign, and he swooped at him with a ferocious stroke, falling
backward in the rebound. Just one word I uttered (spell it with three,
not four, letters), and implored him to be calm. Then he hit the fish
on the head with the back of the gaff. In the silence of despair I
resigned myself as he smote again; he actually now gaffed the fish, but
seemed too paralysed to lift him up the low bank. However, I dropped
the rod and snatched the gaff out of his hands, to discover that the
strangest thing in my experience had happened. The fish was gaffed
clean through the upper lip. The point of the gaff lay side by side
with my fly, the only difference being that the former was clean
through and the latter nicely embedded in the mouth. It was a sea
trout a fraction over 13 lb.

An unkind fate declines to give me the month of August in its e