CLEAR WATERS 



such a designation. There was nothing in that ; many 

 of us have been taken in by the alluring look of Norman 

 and Breton streams and their eloquent local advocates. 

 I was once myself granted permission by its absentee 

 proprietor to fish a lovely purling stream in Normandy. 

 Indeed there was a keeper on the river bank, and I had 

 a letter to him, so of course considered myself in clover. 

 That keeper was well worth knowing, for he was a great 

 original, so also was he, I fear, a scandalously unfaithful 

 steward. He talked rather big about the poachers, 

 ' the bracconiers.^ When I asked him how he handled 

 them he took down a cavalry sabre from over the 

 chimney, drew it from its sheath, and waved it in 

 dramatic fashion. I soon discovered that though it 

 was happy May time there were practically no trout 

 in the stream, whereupon my innkeeper informed me 

 as a dead secret that he could have told me that before, 

 which was annoying, and furthermore that the water 

 was regularly netted by poachers, the keeper himself 

 taking a leading hand in the operation. 



But to return to my friend's much more exciting 

 story — two days before his return to England, having 

 abandoned in disgust his leased fishing, he was walking 

 by the side of quite a large river, the name of which 

 I forget, but he describes it as about the size of one 

 of our larger chalk streams, and of rather deep, slow, 

 gliding current. The populace, and it was near a town, 

 plied their rude art upon it with worm, grasshopper, 

 and suchlike lures attached to the clumsiest tackle. 

 And they were all after trout, the river being a natural 

 trout stream. But they scarcely ever caught any- 

 thing, and what inspired my friend to think of making 



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