lent. The recording angel is
kept busy, during the season, in taking a note of all the myths told
there by the fishers in the evening over the whisky and soda.

There may be heard, at night, in most hotels in the Western Isles, the
riotous scampering of rats overhead and along the walls. In Lochmaddy
hotel there used to be an old frisker (perhaps he is living still) that
gave great entertainment, though no one ever saw him. He lifted a stone,
evidently with his mouth, ran a yard or two with it, and then dropped it
with a great clatter. The game was a pleasure to him, for he would
practice it for half an hour at a time. The anglers who frequented the
hotel called him _the mason_.

I have got into conversation with innumerable knights of the rod, and
can sympathise to a slight extent with their enthusiasm. Nothing seems
to take hold of a man so irrevocably as Walton's mania. Travelling by
night in the north lately, I looked out into the dusk from the carriage
window and beheld a bright flash of lightning, and by the gleam thereof
saw a midnight maniac with his rod silhouetted against the vast inane.
How few fishers nowadays, except perhaps Mr. Andrew Lang, can write
their experiences in good marrowy English--

The quaint loquacious wits of long ago,
Whose ease was never broken by the shrill
Whistle of engine panting round the hill,
Could by the brook where fishful waters flow,
Spend the long hours in angling to and fro,
And hooking lusty trout and salmon, till
The low-descending sun and evening chill
Would send them to the merry ingle-glow;
Then, after fit refection, pen and ink
Would consecrate on paper all their feats
In rippling phrases flashing with the blink
Of forest glades and living water-sheets;
The race is poorer now than it was then:
We have no anglers that can wield the pen.

I believe the best region in all Scotland for trout is the wild and
picturesque county of Sutherland. In the district of Assynt alone there
are 150 lochs, fine sheets of water most of them, lying about among the
hills. Half-way between the two seas and just on the borders of
Sutherland and Ross, is the cosy wee hotel of Altnacealgach, with a
well-stocked loch at the door, from which hundredweights of trout are
taken every year. The air that blows about the house is to that of
London as champagne is to dish-water.

There is a close connection, as I said, between the frequenta