CLEAR WATERS 



an immigrant from Yorkshire, I think a retired trades- 

 man, had bought a few acres of land and built himself 

 a house of rather singular aspect by the river's side. 

 A strange Yorkshireman in the sequestered heart of 

 Devon is, I need not say, almost as much a foreigner 

 as a Frenchman from the rustic point of view, an alien 

 to be held at arm's length and pelted with the brick- 

 bats of rural criticism. It is equally certain, too, 

 that the criticisms would be returned with compound 

 interest by a scornful and canny northerner thus 

 situated. Mutual relations were at any rate a trifle 

 strained. So when the landowners threw their re- 

 spective waters into the fishing association at its in- 

 ception, the Yorkshireman stubbornly refused to do 

 anything of the kind, and consequently, when you 

 got to his little demesne you had to skip a couple of 

 hundred yards of most excellent water or run the risk 

 of facing his quite justifiable indignation. On the 

 occasion in question a young curate from a distance, 

 innocent of this obstacle to the otherwise unchecked 

 career his ticket ensured him, had applied himself with 

 ardour to the three or four excellent pools on the 

 Yorkshireman's ground, and was fortunate enough in 

 one of them to hook and kill a fish of over a pound 

 weight. And not only that, but in his innocence and 

 lightness of heart for the sockdolager in his basket, he 

 sat down close to the owner's house, and having there 

 consumed his lunch, lit his pipe to enjoy his triumph 

 in a beatific state of mind we can all of us sympathise 

 with. It was not till then that the ogre espied the 

 audacious intruder, and hurrying to the scene asked 

 him if he knew what he was doing. The curate, not 

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