DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 21 



a broadening eddy from off a bridge near home. 

 The httle bit of cork, double the size of a green pea, 

 weighted by a single shot, was no sooner in position 

 and prepared to float away than down it bobbed and 

 a joyous voice responded with : T've got him, Phil.' 

 Another little worm on the little hook, and the tiny 

 float bobbed again. Repetitions of these manoeuvres 

 soon so thinned the httle pool, or frightened the 

 uncaptured ones awa}-, that we had to break fresh 

 ground. We did this so carefully at first that only 

 our feet got wet. Our success in shallow eddies, 

 where the smoky water occasionally revealed the 

 golden gravel, was ver\^ great, and the tall bracken 

 which we scrambled through, to get near them, hid 

 us well from sight, but it made us ver\^ wet — so wet 

 that we took each other home, slipped upstairs, and had 

 a thorough change of clothes before we showed our 

 captures or ourselves. 



The scenes we rambled through on our third day 

 might have been in the \\'ildemess adjacent to, or 

 a part of, the garden of our first parents, and are well 

 worthy of a visit from the busiest of their offspring. 

 A well-marked path, used as a short cut to distant 

 farms, tempted us from the river's course into depths 

 of woodland, where the sunlight flickered down and 

 gave us peeps into deep mystic shades where fairies 

 might be seen if we approached quite noiselessl3'. 

 Where are the fairies? We had often seen their 

 dancing-rings in the meadows, quite bare and brown 

 with midnight use; v/here can they now be hiding? 

 Our faith in fairies, so firmly planted in us while too 

 young to learn aught else, had taken so deep a root 

 that my twenty and m}^ companion's seventeen 

 years of life had not nearly worn it out. It softened 

 our tread and speech so much, as we peered here and 

 there in our indefinite expectations, that, when we 

 glanced round comers, rabbits sat up and looked at 

 us, and hares hopped across the path without the 



