CLEAR WATERS 



attribute to its respective members he was pre- 

 eminently its sedate and serious-minded one, a person 

 proof against every folly of youth, even sport, but who 

 looked on our enthusiasms with kindly toleration and 

 philosophical good-humour, and with something of 

 a twinkling eye. So it was arranged that our im- 

 maculate and unsuspecting friend should go home by 

 dog-cart and train bearing in the most open fashion 

 we could devise our, as we supposed, illegal haul. 

 The price we were to pay for the enjoyment we ex- 

 pected to derive from our nefarious design was a 

 twenty-mile walk home across country, which we pro- 

 fessed the greatest desire for. And as we tramped 

 across the snow-covered moors, and later along the 

 muddy roads of East Lothian, we chuckled horribly 



at the notion of dear old D , of all people in the 



world, being challenged, bantered, and even sum- 

 monsed and led away to durance-vile for flourishing 

 about in a market-town and two or three subsequent 

 railway junctions with an armful of kelts. It seemed 

 simply glorious, and infinitely solaced our long and 

 weary way. Many were the conjectures as to his 

 fate, or at any rate his adventures, as we drew near 

 home, and saw the lights of our common domicile 

 shining through the gloom. Deep, I fear, our dis- 

 appointment when we found our would-be victim 

 composedly smoking his pipe before the fire without 

 a trace of past troubles or discomfort upon his benevo- 

 lent face. The briefest inquiry satisfied us that nothing 

 at all had happened, and the ugly fish were all hanging 

 up safe in the larder, objects of admiration to the rest 

 of the unsophisticated household. If our little joke 



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