74 TROUT FISHING 



club with very high ideals as to what is sporting. I 

 fished and I had exceptionally good sport, even for 

 a dream. And presently there came along the bank 

 our honorary secretary, who is perhaps the best 

 sportsman of us all. He asked if I had done any- 

 thing. " Yes," I said, " I have done very well." 

 And I showed him my creel, how it brimmed over. 

 " And here " — I led him a little way along the bank 

 to where a glistening heap of trout lay covered with 

 fresh-cut sedges — " and here " — yet a few yards off 

 was another similar heap. There must have been 

 seventy or eighty large trout in all. But our 

 secretary said no word. He simply looked sorrowful 

 and turned away. And as he went I remembered 

 for the first time that our limit on the water was 

 at present two brace. I woke in a cold perspiration 

 of horror at the thing which I had done. 



Or perhaps it was not that day which gave me 

 that nightmare, perhaps it was that other day on 

 Caradoc's preserve when I had a great basket of five 

 brace. " Five brace, my dear fellow, is our limit," 

 he had said, so I seized opportunity by the forelock 

 and slew them. And then when I reported progress 

 with great pride, he looked grave at me. " But for 

 our guests," he said, " the limit is four brace." 

 However, I fear I never took that misdeed much to 

 heart. These class distinctions are odious. 



