DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 7 



the bird has not, as yet, appeared that can make him 

 walk meekly with the meekest of the hens. 



I was full of this need to be a fighter when Pavey 

 gave me my first rod. 



'Do you think, Pavey, I shall have to fight to 

 keep it?' I asked. 



He looked much surprised and said, *I hope not, 

 my boy, I hope not,' in such a sad voice that I tried 

 to comfort him by asking, 'Have you ever had to fight, 

 Pavey ? ' 



'Only once, my boy, since I left school, and then 

 I got an unlucky kick, and that's how I lost my 

 eye.' 



Pavey was my earliest tutor for fishing, and much 

 besides, and a better teacher it would be hard to find. 

 It v^all be a pleasure for me to tell of him, for I owe 

 him more than I can say. Who shall measure the 

 happiness of such a memory as is mine of him., kept 

 fresh and helpful for nearly threescore years? 'Sweep, 

 Sweep.' Hear that sound where I may and I stand 

 again in Pavey's shed listening to liis tales while he 

 is making my rod. He knew the note of every bird 

 and could imitate them so well as to deceive the birds 

 themselves. The haimts and ways of animals were 

 quite famihar to him, and I think he liked to let me 

 learn and share his joys; and I did so until I, too, 

 became alert to every sound and got some knowledge 

 of its meaning, and thus became a lover of the funny 

 ways of Hving things. We have not sat outside rabbit 

 holes making noises like turnips to draw their inmates 

 out, as Mark Twain advised an inquirer to do, but I 

 have lain by Pavey's side and heard him imitate the 

 squeal a rabbit makes when the stoat has got it, and 

 watched the stoat come from oiit the hiding-place 

 to which we had seen him run. When in business 

 attire he was the longest length of animated soot 

 between Porlock and Penzance, and, what is more, 

 he could be warranted not to change much in hue by 



