84 FRESH FIELDS 



Your born angler is like a hound that scents no 

 game but that which he is in pursuit of. Every 

 sense and faculty were concentrated upon that hov- 

 ering fly. This man wooed the stream, quivering 

 with pleasure and expectation. Every foot of it 

 he tickled with his decoy. His close was evi- 

 dently a short one, and he made the most of it. 

 He lingered over every cast, and repeated it again 

 and again. An American angler would have been 

 out of sight down stream long ago. But this fish- 

 erman was not going to bolt his preserve ; his line 

 should taste every drop of it. His eager, stealthy 

 movements denoted his enjoyment and his absorp- 

 tion. When a trout was caught, it was quickly 

 rapped on the head and slipped into his basket, as 

 if in punishment for its tardiness in jumping. "Be 

 quicker next time, will you ? " (British trout, by 

 the way, are not so beautiful as our own. They 

 have more of a domesticated look. They are less 

 brilliantly marked, and have much coarser scales. 

 There is no gold or vermilion in their coloring.) 



Presently there arose from a bushy corner of a 

 near field a low, peculiar purring or humming 

 sound, that sent a thrill through me; of course, I 

 thought my bird was inflating her throat. Then 

 the sound increased, and was answered or repeated 

 in various other directions. It had a curious ven- 

 triloquial effect. I presently knew it to be the 

 nightjar or goatsucker, a bird that answers to our 

 whip-poor-will. Very soon the sound seemed to 

 be floating all about me, Jr-r-r-r-r or Chr-r-r-r-r, 



