54 SORELY TRIED 



broke its hold. He was much vexed, as the 

 suddenly compressed lips showed, but as he was 

 about to give vent to his feelings a still larger 

 fish rose under the bank, close to the leveret. 

 This sight checked the word on the very tip 

 of his tongue. The cast, a long one even from 

 the edge of the bank to which he now moved 

 up, was rendered difficult if not impossible by 

 the withies, which twice caught the tail-fly at the 

 beofinnincr of the forward cast and as often 

 caused the Squire to give utterance to a mono- 

 syllable delivered with staccato sharpness. At 

 lencrth he succeeded in clearino^ the withies and 



o o 



getting the line out to its full length. It was a 

 good, clean cast, and would have been perfect 

 had the pool been a yard wider ; as it was, the 

 coch-y-bondhu caught in the rushes and, despite 

 the coaxing treatment to which the Squire 

 subjected it, refused to come away, the only 

 result being to alarm the hare and raise the ire 

 of the angler. Worse was to come ; for presently 

 the trout, which kept rising with irritating per- 

 sistence, seized the dropper, hooked itself, and 

 in the violent struggle that followed broke the 

 tackle and got away with the red palmer in its 

 jaw. 



The situation was beyond the power of words, 

 and it was strange to see how the Squire met 



