8 AN OPEN CREEL 



For the bull-heads in the other brook we used not 

 only to grope, but also to angle. Sometimes we would 

 do it in the most barefaced manner. Raising a likely 

 stone, we discovered our quarry lurking beneath. If 

 the stone was then very gently replaced, the fish ap- 

 parently took no alarm, and after an interval a little 

 red worm on a small hook placed at the edge of his 

 haunt would have the desired effect. But there was 

 one deep pool in which we had to use a float, and from 

 this I no, I am not sure that it was I we caught 

 on a never-to-be-forgotten day a fish, a great fish, a 

 miraculous fish, a fish with red spots. It was the first 

 trout, and it weighed belike two ounces. We went 

 home, " striking the stars with our august heads." 

 One more trout we had out of the same brook lower 

 down, where it was bigger, but I will not dwell on the 

 incident. It was at the period when we collected 

 butterflies and were never abroad without butterfly- 

 nets. 



Contemporary with the schooldays in Arden are 

 memories of fishing in the summer holidays, all de- 

 tached and fragmentary. They amount to little more 

 than a series of mental pictures, with myself more or 

 less heroic in the foreground more, as when, at about 

 the age of ten, I saw the huge perch cruising about 

 under the camp-sheeting, seized by main force the 

 rod of a protesting but smaller playmate, and, again 

 by main force, hauled the fish to dry land and fell upon 

 it. I believe it weighed one and a half pounds. The rod, 

 a telescopic Japanese thing, was broken in the crisis, and 

 I seem to remember that there ensued what are popu- 

 larly known as " words." I also remember the worm 



