SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 179 



The sporting Shepherd is in even greater force at a 

 meeting of the worthies of the " Noctes," at the appro- 

 priate "anglers' retreat" of Tibby Shiel's on St. Mary's 

 Loch. The meeting came off, by the way, in late 

 autumn, which made his piscatory feats the more 

 wonderful. Answering North's inquiry as to what 

 he had been doing, the Shepherd begins his matter- 

 of-fact narrative with a charming affectation of modesty. 

 "No muckle. I left Altrive after breakfast about 

 nine and the Douglas burn looking gey tempting, I 

 tried it with the black gnat, and sune creeled some four 

 or five dizzen the maist o' them sma' few exceeding 

 a pund." Tiring of trouting, he had changed his 

 trout-cast for a salmon-fly, and left the Douglas burn 

 for the Yarrow. " I was jist wattin my flee near the 

 edge when a new-run fish, strong as a white horse, 

 rushed at it, and then out o' the water wi' a spring 

 higher than my head." That incident ends, after 

 sundry thrilling vicissitudes in landing the heaviest 

 fish that was ever killed in the Yarrow, when the 

 fortunate captor turns for a change to the loch, and 

 tries the otter. Result two dozen, the one half the 

 size of herring, the other half the size of haddocks, 

 with one grey trout as big as a cod. Next, he pays 

 a parenthetical visit to some night lines, pulling up 

 pike and eel alternately, " wi' maist unerrin' regularity 

 of succession," till he could have fancied that " a' the 

 fishy life the water had contained was now wallopin' 

 and wrigglin' in the sudden sunshine of unexpected 

 day." 



