Roaching. 113 



" Hallo ! a cow ! "What ! at my baskets ! The deuce ! The dev — 

 why she's eating my ground bait ! " and off I set full split ; but I was too 

 late, and I only got there just as she was licking up the last crumbs of a 

 (to her) most delicious bran mash. 



I guess I sat down on a stump and sang a verse of something 

 • sacerdotal ; and perhaps that cow didn't have brickbats and other light 

 trifles after her. It would have taken me an hour and a half to go back and 

 make up more bait, so I gave it up for that day. 



But, talking of animals and curiosity, and that sort of thing, I never 

 shall forget a scene that I once saw at Penn Pond, in Richmond Park. I 

 was there fishing for pike, with two friends. We had had some capital 

 sport at the upper or larger pond, one pike of 121b., one of 91b., and seven 

 or eight of 41b., 51b., and 61b. We put them all together in a heap, and 

 covered them with fern to hide them from people passing, and went on 

 down to the far end of the lower or smaller pond. We were engaged in 

 landing a small fish when suddenly our attendant. Old Jemmy Hall, of 

 '"Field-crew" memory, called out, "HuUo! what's them sanguineous pigs 

 a-doin' with our jack ? I'm something somethinged if they ain't a eatin' 

 of 'em." Off he set in a tremendous hurry to chivey the pigs from our 

 pike, but he put his foot into a boggy hole, and over he went, ploughing 

 the mud with his nose, and his huge bucket fisherman's boots in the air. 

 Up he got— away we all raced — " Shoo-shoo-hoo ! Yah-yah ! How-how-how ! 

 drop them jack ! shoo-hoo! whoo-hoop." 



As soon as we get near them, every pig collared his pike, and went 

 off all over the place — here, there, and everywhere. We chiveyed and chased, 

 laughing, hooting, and exasperating. It would have been to an on-looker, 

 not interested in the fish, as side-splitting a spectacle as he would see in 

 a day's walk. 



At length we drove them off and collected the fragments, every fish 

 was chawed and spoilt, some half eaten, some bitten all over — our take 

 was done for. 



But, revenons a nos roachums. When I get back I find Jork in despair ; 

 he has lost something " tremenjous" — a 31b. roach at least. 



" There are no 31b. roach in the stream, Jork ; now and then a two- 



