DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 141 



returned to take me in the boat, and we left the river 

 to the flies. 



The anglers' joy with flies is sometimes so great 

 that they wait their coming with a patience that 

 they are lacking in for all else. They will smoke 

 away long hours on a river's bank with ears that 

 lengthen to detect a splash, and with eyes opened 

 to their widest for the first ring that shall tell of a rising 

 fish. There's a ring and there's a splash, and then 

 more rings and splashes, and soon the river is as full of 

 life and tumult as before it was dull and lifeless. The 

 May-fly's up, and the fisher's yearly carnival will soon 

 be in full swing. 



We, my friend H. G. D. and I, were on the Kennet, 

 with the sole privilege of fishing three miles of the 

 very best of that best of rivers when the May-fly is up. 

 The keeper wired the news, and, as it found us both 

 aUve, we w^ere by the river waiting the rise, and had 

 walked its length, so far as our interest extended, and 

 seen fish or tails of fish that when captured would satisfy 

 the hungriest ambition for a monster Kennet trout. 



Below the bridge and beyond the long shallow, 

 just where the river begins to deepen before taking 

 a sharp bend, is the home of the oldest patriarch 

 within the keeper's knowledge, thirteen pounds at 

 least. We could see only his tail at first, but now 

 and then the long green banners that hid all else of 

 him would, in their swaying with the stream, have 

 a rent which gave us glimpses of his huge spotted 

 side. There he is and has been these twelve months 

 past without a thought for flies, but presently he will 

 become a victim to the feverish haste that will possess 

 all the other fish to gobble up the luscious drake, which 

 once tasted, all thoughts of moderation go, and, like 

 drunkards, they are not so particular as they were 

 about what they take. Men (some of us) go just as 

 mad about the May-fly, only more so and much earlier. 

 The year's business is so arranged that we may see the 



