VI The Last Salmon before Close Time 451 



merrily along till he had enough. Just as I got a 

 little refreshed, and began to hope that we should settle 

 our little difference in the still water, he turned his 

 head down again, and away he went, making the 

 water glance from the line as if a Minie ball had 

 tipped the stream, down to the place where I had 

 first clodded him, and where I now clodded him again 

 more vigorously than before. Four times did he bowl 

 me up and down that most broken bit of broken land 

 and water. And all the while the cows on the other 

 side stood solemnly gazing at me, and the wee bit 

 lassie who tended them shrieked in ecstasy as I 



splashed by her, ' Hurs intill a fush ! ' was pools 



above me. Not a friend on earth had I ; not a 

 gaff was near ; nothing but the lassie with her bit 

 plaidie over her head, and her eternal ' Hurs intill a 

 fush ! ' I began to hate and despise the fush ; I 

 began to disbelieve in him. Had he not gone up 

 stream I should have fancied that I had hooked a 

 submerged and wandering whin - bush. I called 

 him a two -pound trout hooked by the tail ; I 

 declared openly to the world that he was nothing 

 but a brute of an eel ; I wished him at Jericho. 

 Still we went at it hammer and tongs, till I became 

 utterly wicked, and wished the fiend had the 

 fush. Just as I was becoming hopelessly insane, 

 I spied Thomas, the groom who drove me a-fishing, 

 sauntering along the brae with a buttercup in the 

 corner of his mouth, as simple and unconcerned as a 

 shepherd in Phineas Fletcher. I yelled at him in 



