SALMON ANGLING IN IRELAND. 205 



I have more than once wished my next neighbour " farther ; " but, 

 as a rule, an angler's sport is never materially injured from the too 

 close proximity of unwelcome neighbours. As we drove along the 

 shores of this solitary lake to the inn our impatience augmented 

 with every step. The water was dark with wind and clouds, and 

 the miniature rollers broke on the beach with a sullen plash, that 

 made breakfast a botheration and delay intolerable. The gracious 

 Duncan (his throne is vacant now) handed mistress and maid from 

 the car, and received in the same breath a contradictory order for 

 instant boat and immediate breakfast. " There was plenty of time," 

 he said, " lashins of it ; the wind would last till midnight any way, 

 perhaps for a week, and gintlemen must eat ; he'd see about a boat." 

 On that occasion only, I brewed the social beverage ; poured it out a 

 moment afterwards ; swallowed a cup of hot straw-coloured water, 

 two or three degrees below the boiling point, pocketed a piece of 

 bread, and rushed frantically out, to find Duncan the Good spelling 

 over the address, and regarding with a puzzled aspect the innumerable 

 railway labels which by this time were nearly as good as an outside 

 cover, and formed, in fact, a sort of supplementary cuticle to my 

 portmanteau. Leaning against the wall was a tall thin peasant, 

 with a bilious countenance, in close conversation with a little round 

 redfaced man, obviously the brewer in ordinary to all the illicit stills 

 yet. to be found in the mountains. These gentlemen, seeing a car 

 drive along at such an unusual hour, had come up on speculation, 

 and, in fact, were " just the boys " Duncan wanted at least, so he 

 said. In another minute the boat's keel grated over the pebbles, 

 when the long man seizing the sculls paddled us off over the wavelets, 

 every crest of which was whitened by the sweeping breeze that 

 hurried over them. Such a day made success a certainty. All was 

 in readiness when the bilious man squared the boat to let her drive 

 fairly over the throw, and the instant he lay on his oars, away flew 

 the flies (a mixed cast for trout and salmon) into the heaving waters. 

 Every foot, nay every inch, the line traversed was so hopeful that I 

 expected to see a broad tail or silvery side flash up each instant. 

 Another, and another cast, " Kylemore can't be as good as I 



