5 8 SPRING RAMBLES 



over which to display his skill ? but nothing came 

 of it till I came down to the pub.) that is to say, a 

 fine ash tree, now beginning to show its curling 

 leaves (away behind the oak, which is in full leaf). 

 Below this tree, lying just a-top of the water with a 

 bunch of weeds hanging on to it, a wicked barbed 

 wire crosses the stream, and there close up to this 

 wicked wire a big trout was rising, I might almost 

 say rubbing his nose against it. 



It was a long cast, right in the teeth of the wind ; 

 and with the fear of catching hold of that accursed 

 wire, or being entangled in the weeds, always be- 

 fore me, I made many a cast before I could put my 

 fly over him. He saw my lovely Yellow Dun, he 

 came at it, and he was nicely hooked. He did not 

 like it at all. His first move was to spring out of 

 the water half-a-yard or so, and then into the weeds 

 below, and there I left him with my pretty Dun 

 sticking in his gills. That was the only Dun I had 

 of that exact pattern. "To-morrow," I said, "I 

 mean to have that Dun again, and you too, my 

 friend." And so I went home, for it rained and 

 blew, and there was nothing else to do. 



Next day being Saturday, my good landlady 

 for she is good to me, looking after me like a 

 mother, though she is thirty years younger than I 

 am asked me what I would like for dinner, not 

 only for that day, but being Whitsuntide she had 

 to provide for Sunday and Monday as well. I 



could only say, " My dear Mrs. B , you know 



exactly what I like, better than I know myself; I 



