EGGS FOR GRANDMOTHERS 35 



there.' The rushing water boils and bubbles over rock 

 and boulder, dark ; but clearing after the night's flood, 

 for in this case the predestined captor has found the 

 river in order — an event which is not always or even 

 often the case. Perhaps the beginner has served a 

 long apprenticeship to trout. If so, he has not so 

 much to learn, although there is a great deal of differ- 

 ence between the neat turn of the wrist which sends 

 the fine line and gossamer cast with dry fly attached 

 to fall just over the rising trout, and the sweep of the 

 arms which urges the ' Jock Scott ' and treble gut across 

 the torrent ; but it may be that he has never handled 

 a fly rod before in his life. Even then he need not 

 despair. The gillie may be stifling or uttering male- 

 dictions in a strange tongue, if he is an Irishman, or 

 bearing his trial more stolidly if he be an elder of the 

 kirk. The rod may describe strange curves in the air, 

 the line may be serpentine in its convolutions, the fly 

 may bump into the water only a few yards from the 

 end of the rod with a splash like a Solan goose coming 

 down upon a herring ; but it is a long line which 

 knows no straightening, and the kindly stream hangs 

 the fly at the right angle, and on a taut line for a 

 portion — although probably only a short portion — of 

 every cast which has not hitched it in a tree or the 

 performer's clothes. A few yards down the stream 



