46 THE EEPOET OF THE No. 36 



almost as I can remember, a fishing trip was the greatest holiday treat we could 

 think of. In my case, I am sure, there was never any danger of other interests 

 getting crowded out; for I was never so absorbed in the gentle art that I didn't 

 keep an eye open, to say nothing of my ears, for the rest of nature ; everything living 

 was fish to my net, and the contents of my wicker creel went far beyond the finny 

 tribes. " Slyboots " caught more trout, but " Merry Andrew's " basket showed 

 quite as big a catch ; among other " queer fish," I brought home, I remember, a 

 young rabbit, a sandpiper, two half grown wood pigeons ("cushie doos"), a bat, 

 a swallow, an owl, a squirrel, a hedge-hog, and once, incredible as it may seem, 

 a pair of full grown weasels. I had spied them playing together near the" Forth, 

 but when I hurried up v/ith a collie dog that had made friends with me on the 

 way, they took refuge in a drain-pipe ; here I prodded them so with the butt of 

 my rod that they rushed out to be mauled by the dog; whether I could ever have 

 tamed them into pets, remains a moot point, for both died next day, and by the 

 advice of a friend — an old naturalist — were laid out in the shrubbery as a bait 

 for carrion beetles. As for the bat and the swallow, they had both flown at my 

 fly-cast as it went sailing over my head and had actually been hooked in mid air. 

 Many a strange adventure and many a rare sight met us on those flshing trips; 

 once we actually had the luck to see a large otter with a sea-trout in its mouth. 

 The older we got, the further we went; and the further we went, the longer grew 

 our list of the wonders of creation. 



Our earliest fishing trips took us to Ochtertyre after perch ; the way to this loch 

 led over fields past the corner of a small lake known as the Serpentine; here we 

 caught our first dragon-flies and the little copper butterfly, gathered bullrushes 

 and water-lilies, found our first nests of coots and waterhens, and were given once 

 a swan's egg by one of the game-keepers. Later on, we found from a summer 

 spent (with whooping cough) at the village of Gargunnock near Stirling, that 

 we could catch brook trout; after that still-fishing for perch with a coloured float 

 lost all its charm; even trolling for pike, and the novelty of hauling flounders 

 and bream out of the tidal waters of the Forth paled before the flerce joy of 

 climbing the trout stream, with its linns and grey mare's tails overhung with 

 rowans and birch — the haunt of water-kelpies — up through the wooded glens to the 

 wind-swept heathery moor where the lonely whaup goes crying among the mountain 

 crags. Here with the spirit of solitude dwelt Mystery and Eomance, and with 

 beckoning flngers — all unknown but none the less imperiously — drew our boyish 

 lives up to heights far above the welter of mundane things. And well for us 

 both, that this Education of Nature had sped apace: for I was only just thirteen 

 when a bolt from the blue brought the whole palace of delights tumbling about 

 our ears with the sudden death of my father. By the time we had crawled painfully 

 out of the ruins to build up the wreck of our happiness, we found ourselves living 

 in a London suburb. 



