290 
fresh-run salmon, about the end of 
April, some years ago. It had been a 
cloudless day, and during the long 
hours he lay under the bank, close to 
the top of the water, so that you might 
easily have touched him with your 
finger, and could see his eye craftily 
turned upon you. I noticed the color 
of his back, and thought sorrowfully 
that he must be a ‘‘red”’ fish, not al- 
lowing, as it afterwards proved, for the 
tint of the water; still, as I reflected, 
these often afford better sport than the 
‘‘clean”’ fish just up from hearty meals 
in the sea on spawns, and too fat for 
sustained exertion. 
He never moved, nor even looked, so 
far as we could tell, at the most tempt- 
ing fly. Time sped away, and faintly, 
in the distance, I could hear the bell at 
Heron Court ringing for the servants’ 
dinner at 1 o'clock. Every fisherman 
knows that each river has certain hours 
during which the fish rise in preference 
‘to any other. Now the r o'clock bell 
at Heron Court had come to be known 
as the salmon-bell, so surely did the 
fish rise at that time of day, not mov- 
ing again to any persuasion till between 
5 and. 7 in, the evenmg." Various 
notable fisherman had by this time 
tried their hands, but with no result. I 
began to think our friend was a lost 
soul and not a)“ ‘right ” ish. at’ all. 
There was something in his glassy eye 
which chilled your very bones and gave 
a certain color to the idea. 
There was no one about. The men 
at the mill higher up the river, but 
within sight, had gone to their dinner, 
guided by the ‘‘salmon”’ bell. Dugald 
approached me with perfidious words 
on his lips and a gaff in his red right 
hand. “ibook! at him!" he. nirged, 
‘“‘laughing at the lot of us. Now, Mi- 
lady, there is no one by, take the gaff 
Lhe Amertwan Angler 
to him! We’ll have him out before the 
men come back from their dinner, and 
crimp him fine, so no one will know but 
what you've hooked him fair and 
square!” It was an awful moment. I 
wavered. Dugald and I stood guiltily 
looking at the gaff. My fingers longed 
for it. At last, with a supreme effort, 
toNo!” I cried; ““*he ska/l, Havers 
chance for his life. I will try for him 
myself at sunset, and then we may 
have more luck, but I will not snatch 
him.” Also, I did not wish to be had up 
before a magistrate for illegal practice. 
Fortified in my mind with this heroic 
resolution, I leisurely returned home to 
recruit the physical part of me with 
luncheon, and to attend to those duties 
from which even the ardent sportswo- 
man is not entirely free. 
About 6 o’clock I returned to the 
charge, fresh and ready for the fray. 
May I here say that wielding of an 
eighteen-foot salmon rod is rather 
strenuous exercise, and that it is not 
easy for a woman to gooncasting forty 
or fifty feet of line, at least in a satisfac- 
tory way, for many hours together ? 
Now, however, I felt that I was mis- 
tress of the situation, and, just as the 
sun was going down, I threw my first 
fly over the reluctant salmon. I sup- 
pose he had run up against the stream 
the night before, and was tired out, so 
that he had not been disposed to rise 
while the sun was up; for now, when I 
was lucky enough with my first cast to 
land the fly just above his nose, he took 
it with a heavy plunge and boil of the 
water all round him, which showed that 
we had not over-estimated his size— 
quite the reverse. I had hooked him, 
nay, rather, he had hooked me, for had 
I been alone he would certainly have 
pulled me into the water in the first 
mad rush. 
