up for an evening trial on the scene of
the morning's sport. We all got something that day, but the sun was
too much for anything but casualties with salmon. With a small Bulldog
I found, hooked, and strove with a fish that bored and jiggered most
unconscionably. He worked like a fair salmon so long as he remained
dogged; when once he moved up from the bottom, however, I estimated him
for a sample that would at least not prove beyond the 10 lb. limit of
my spring balance. And so it turned out. D. did me the honour of
missing him twice in succession with the gaff, and he quite lost his
nerve. He threw down the gaff, in his agitation, and, amidst roars of
laughter from a couple of onlookers on the farther side, literally
danced about amongst salmon, gaff, and line. Sternly I bade him get
out of the way, and by a crowning mercy his gaff at the false strikes,
and his feet during the _pas deux_ (he and the salmon were actually
waltzing together on the stones) had not touched the line, However, the
fish was exhausted, and followed me with commendable docility as I
retired in good order up the bank, hauling him bodily. D. now seemed
stricken with remorse; he clattered into the water behind the fish, and
with the ferocity of a very Viking kicked it ignominiously up to the
grassy plateau to which I had moved. How much avoirdupois the worthy
man had kicked out of that salmon I know not; what remained weighed 7
lb., and it was a singularly bright and handsomely shaped fish. There
was this advantage in the application of the boot instead of the
gaff--the fish was not disfigured by a gashed side.

The salmon was very welcome, but I was thinking all the while of the
excitement of the morning and the brisk quivering of the trout rod.
Somehow I found myself down there again in the early evening, D.
accompanying me with another attack of depression. He was quite right
from his point of view. His master had taught him--if, indeed, he had
not inherited the doctrine--that salmon are the only things worth
calling fish. Sea trout count for nothing; brown trout for less than
that. Still, he pocketed his disapproval, and came along with lack
lustre eye. S. came down, too, just as I was wading in, to see me
start, and in a few minutes I announced that a good fish had risen
short at the small Killer. This was a timely falsity, as I wanted just
then the opportunity of filling my pipe--not an easy thing to do
knee-deep in water.