BOAT FISHING 73 



the evening's consumption, when music and merri- 

 ment were the order of the day ; and not a few 

 surprises and jokes, good, bad, and indifferent, were 

 devised and executed. On my first visit I had come 

 straight from grouse-shooting with Lord Cairns at his 

 pleasant autumn quarters in Forfarshire ; and his 

 servant had presented me with an unexpected gift in 

 the shape of a gigantic wooden bootjack which he 

 had placed in my portmanteau on my departure. I 

 received in the evening a serio-comic letter from my 

 late hostess reproaching me for repaying her hospi- 

 tality by annexing her property ; and the sight of some 

 of the days' catch going off as presents with their tails 

 protruding from a neat covering of reeds suggested to 

 me a suitable reprisal. I begged the tail of a fine 

 twenty-pound fish, and sent off the stolen property 

 suitably directed, disguised as the counterfeit present- 

 ment of a large salmon. Lady Cairns was equal 

 to the occasion ; for when she wrote thanking me for 

 the fine fish, she mentioned that she was unable to 

 enjoy it herself, as she was leaving on a visit, but that 

 she had sent it on direct to her neighbour, Lord 

 Dalhousie, at Invermark, a little higher up the glen. 

 Of course this was an invention, but I could not help 

 wishing that it had been true, and that I could have 

 seen the face of the old laird when he opened his 



