176 DUNCAN GRANT. 



not very favourable ; and in that case your muscles will 

 ache insupportably, if they at all resemble those of other 

 men. The easiest position, when it is safe to use it, is 

 to place the butt of your rod against the stomach as a 

 rest, and to bring the upper part of the arm and the 

 elbow in close contact with the sides, putting on at the 

 same time an air of determination. 



If your leviathan should be superlatively boisterous, 

 no one knows what may happen. For instance, should 

 you be in a boat, and he should shoot away down the 

 river, you must follow rapidly ; then, when he again 

 turns upwards, what a clever fellow your fisherman 

 must be, to stop a boat that has been going down a rapid 

 stream at the rate of eight miles an hour, and bring it 

 round all of a sudden in time to keep company with 

 the fish, who has taken an upward direction ! And what 

 a clever fellow a piscator must be, if he can prevent 

 twenty yards of his line, or more, from hanging loose in 

 the stream ! These sort of things will happen, and 

 they are ticklish concerns. All I can do is to recom- 

 mend caution and patience ; and the better to encourage 

 you in the exercise of these virtues, I will recount 

 what happened to Duncan Grant in days of yore. 



" First, you must understand that what is called ' pre- 

 serving the river' was formerly imknown, and every 

 one who chose to take a cast did so without let or 

 hinderance 



" In pursuance of this custom, in the month of July, 

 some thirty years ago, one Duncan Grant, a shoemaker 

 by profession, who was more addicted to fishing than to 

 his craft, went up the way from the village of Aberlour, 



