firmly bound to a rod with cord, and a piece of canvas kerchief, with
a lump of bread inside it; and so went into the pebbly water, trying to
think how warm it was. For more than a mile all down the Lynn stream,
scarcely a stone I left unturned, being thoroughly skilled in the tricks
of the loach, and knowing how he hides himself. For being gray-spotted,
and clear to see through, and something like a cuttle-fish, only more
substantial, he will stay quite still where a streak of weed is in the
rapid water, hoping to be overlooked, not caring even to wag his tail.
Then being disturbed he flips away, like whalebone from the finger, and
hies to a shelf of stone, and lies with his sharp head poked in under
it; or sometimes he bellies him into the mud, and only shows his
back-ridge. And that is the time to spear him nicely, holding the fork
very gingerly, and allowing for the bent of it, which comes to pass, I
know not how, at the tickle of air and water.

Or if your loach should not be abroad when first you come to look for
him, but keeping snug in his little home, then you may see him come
forth amazed at the quivering of the shingles, and oar himself and look
at you, and then dart up-stream, like a little grey streak; and then you
must try to mark him in, and follow very daintily. So after that, in a
sandy place, you steal up behind his tail to him, so that he cannot set
eyes on you, for his head is up-stream always, and there you see him
abiding still, clear, and mild, and affable. Then, as he looks so
innocent, you make full sure to prog him well, in spite of the wry of
the water, and the sun making elbows to everything, and the trembling
of your fingers. But when you gird at him lovingly, and have as good as
gotten him, lo! in the go-by of the river he is gone as a shadow goes,
and only a little cloud of mud curls away from the points of the fork.

A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg, went
my little self that day on man's choice errand--destruction. All
the young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God's
certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them was
aware that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cow
might come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a
kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over
the channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his
breast-feathers; even an otte