26 THE WONDERFUL TROUT 



or some local angler who ' prefers the dark- 

 ness rather than the light/ as he comes 

 striding down the river's brink, a pole over 

 his shoulder, or waving like a poplar in a 

 gale over the devoted stream ; throwing his 

 coil far down before him, and covering 

 perhaps four miles of river-bank and acres 

 of water, not more than a foot or eighteen 

 inches in depth, which, however, hold trout 

 it is just about able to conceal. 



Evening comes, and he comes back to 

 1 mine inn ' a sadder, perhaps, but often a no 

 wiser man. He complains bitterly of a 

 ' bothering up-stream wind.' He produces 

 (or not, as he pleases) a few par and an odd 

 trout not much bigger than gudgeon, which, 

 with a backward wave of his sixteen- footer, 

 he had chucked into the nearest road of the 

 adjoining parish. He never thinks of com- 

 plaining of his ' cubits ' or his c pole,' or the 

 long shadows cast over four miles of water 

 which he has covered with his line ; nor does 

 he dream of apologising to other anglers 

 who would have been content to fish correctly 

 any one half-mile or mile of the same, and 

 have brought in, say, seven or eight pounds 



