anything like them in any hook-book, nor could I deceive the trout by the
primitive dodge of tying a red thread round the shank of a dark fly. So
I waded out, and fell to munching a frugal sandwich and watching Nature,
not without a cigarette.

Now Nature is all very well. I have nothing to say against her of a
Sunday, or when trout are not rising. But she was no comfort to me now.
Smiling she gazed on my discomfiture. The lovely lines of the hills,
curving about the loch, and with their deepest dip just opposite where I
sat, were all of a golden autumn brown, except in the violet distance.
The grass of Parnassus grew thick and white around me, with its moonlight
tint of green in the veins. On a hillside by a brook the countryfolk
were winning their hay, and their voices reached me softly from far off.
On the loch the marsh-fowl flashed and dipped, the wild ducks played and
dived and rose; first circling high and higher, then, marshalled in the
shape of a V, they made for Alemoor. A solitary heron came quite near
me, and tried his chance with the fish, but I think he had no luck. All
this is pleasant to remember, and I made rude sketches in the fly-leaves
of a copy of Hogg's poems, where I kept my flies. But what joy was there
in this while the "take" grew fainter and ceased at least near the shore?
Out in the middle, where few flies managed to float, the trout were at it
till dark. But near shore there was just one trout who never stopped
gorging all day. He lived exactly opposite the nick in the distant
hills, and exactly a yard farther out than I could throw a fly. He was a
big one, and I am inclined to think that he was the Devil. For, if I had
stepped in deeper, and the water had come over my wading boots, the odds
are that my frail days on earth would have been ended by a chill, and I
knew this, and yet that fish went on tempting me to my ruin. I suppose I
tried to reach him a dozen times, and cast a hundred, but it was to no
avail. At length, as the afternoon grew grey and chill, I pitched a rock
at him, by way of showing that I saw through his fiendish guile, and I
walked away.

There was no rise now, and the lake was leaden and gloomy. When I
reached the edge of the deep reeds I tried, once or twice, to wade
through them within casting distance of the water, but was always driven
off by the traitorous quagginess of the soil. At last, taking my courage
in both hands, I actually got so near that