SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 



where the current, after gliding under the brick bridge 

 of the drive up to Preshute house, runs with a bit of 

 Hfe in it against the low walled-up end of the garden, 

 where two small bushes, the very same ones as of old, 

 no whit altered, sprout out of the masonry and hang 

 slightly over the water. This had been almost the 

 only fishable spot, except the hatch-hole, in the wet-fly 

 period when the breeze dropped on the whole half 

 mile of otherwise still water. It was a rare place in 

 any case for fish to lie, and there was at least one 

 average-sized trout there on this occasion. 



Whether I could merely spot him or whether he 

 rose I forget, but I tried him long and patiently, 

 though to no purpose, with a small sedge from the 

 meadow bank opposite. It was simple fishing and easily 

 covered, the only drawback, as of old, being the bridge 

 immediately above, liable at any minute to be occupied 

 by passing schoolboys, for Preshute is the most out- 

 lying of the school boarding-houses, and if a fisherman 

 chanced to be at work, a natural curiosity pulled every 

 wayfarer up short at the parapet, and away down 

 stream went the trout into the weeds below. A bevy 

 of boys did me this dis-service now, and if only my 

 coy three-quarter-pounder had sailed down I should 

 merely have reeled up and gone home without annoy- 

 ance, as time and a dinner engagement pressed. But 

 to my astonishment a great big fish, very big indeed 

 to be waiting there in that eminently surface-feeding 

 spot, went down with him. My pulse beat a bit 

 faster as I felt I had been fishing over such a prize, for 

 I had searched with my fly the whole ten yards or so 

 of brisk water under the wall on spec. I guessed, 



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