th his cast-net and store the bait-can with gudgeons and
minnows, and to crack jokes before the tumbling and rumbling weir, with
its deep, wide pool, high banks around, and overhanging bushes.
Serton, electing for a little Waltonian luxury, sat him down in
comfort, plumbed a hard bottom in six feet of water, caught a dace at
the first swim, and, with his cockney-bred maggots, took five others in
succession--three roach, and a bleak which he reported in town, at the
Bottle's Head, as the largest ever seen.

Meanwhile M., who was paternostering with worm and minnow, came down to
inform S. that he had already landed four perch, and that the shoal was
still unfrightened. With a recommendation to his friend to do
likewise, he returned to his station, and his basketed perch might soon
have recited, "Master, we are seven." Thereabouts a shout from S. made
the welkin ring; he cried aloud for help, and M. sprinted along in time
to save the fine tackle by netting a big chub. From the merry style of
the beginning, the captor had felt assured of more roach, and now
confessed that they and dace had ceased biting, though he had used
paste and maggot alternately. Then he took to small red worm and
angled forth a dish of fat gudgeon, that would have put a Seine fisher
in raptures. Next he lost a fish by breakage, and while repairing
damages was arrested by a distant summons from his companion, whom he
discovered wrestling with something--no perch, however--that had gained
the further side of the pool, and was now heading remorselessly for the
apron of the weir, under which it fouled and freed. The witnesses of
the defeat were probably right in their conclusion that this was the
aged black trout that had become a legend, and was believed to be the
only trout left in those parts.

During the afternoon M. and S., in peaceful brotherhood, sat over the
pool, plied paternoster and roach pole, and fished till the float could
be no more identified in the dusk. They carried to the cottage each
ten or twelve pounds' weight extra in fish caught, but in his memories
of the homeward walk S. must have been mistaken in his eloquent
reference to the crake of the landrail, though he might have been
correct as to the weak, piping cry of the circling bats, and the
ghostly passage of flitting owl mousing low over the meadow. These
alone, he said, broke the silence; in this M. took him to task, having
himself heard the tinkling of sheep bells and