FISHING IN RIVER, STREAM, AND LOCH 173 



old castle, on the very spot where the boat with muffled 

 oars stole in under cover of the night to rescue Queen 

 Mary and her ladies. There Roland Grasme or the 

 little Douglas consigned the castle keys to the keep- 

 ing of the kelpies ; and thence you looked across to 

 the picturesque village, where the page, having broken 

 away from the Chamberlain, met Seyton at the mounte- 

 bank's, among the frolics of the fair. Now you were 

 at anchor off the islet of St. Serf; and now you were 

 drifting beneath the brow of Benarty ; while scarcely a 

 height in the sub-Highland landscape around you but 

 had been touched by the wand of the Wizard of the 

 North. And if a man have a soul above so many 

 pound weight by the weighing-machine, the romance of 

 such associations goes for much in loch-fishing. 



There is the romance of scenery too, which is often 

 the romance of desolation, when the trout, though 

 many, are so small as to be a mere pretext for the 

 excursion as when you follow up some mountain-burn 

 flowing down through the moors possibly tumbling 

 in cascades over stony staircases, or growling and 

 murmuring between the banks it has mined, under leafy 

 arcades of tangled vegetation. Colquhoun, in " The 

 Moor and Loch," will tell you how you have often to 

 scramble up its course upon hands and knees how, 

 here and there, where you find tolerable footing and 

 some shoulder-room, you must still make your casts 

 have doubled up, with the shortest and stiffest of rods, 

 and a mere fag-end of casting-line. Very probably, 

 though you have rather a distaste for bait-fishing, you 



