WATERS OF YOUTH 13 



very pleasing to the eye. The investment was not 

 remunerative. That same week, however, I received 

 a gift which was. By the backwater I came upon a 

 grown-up angler who had a roach nearly as big as 

 himself. He told me that it was two and a half 

 pounds, and that he had caught it with red lead. He 

 gave me of this miraculous bait, and that same even- 

 ing I caught a roach of three quarters of a pound 

 myself on a piece of it, thereby breaking my record 

 utterly. I have never tried the bait since, but no 

 doubt it makes a good colouring matter for paste. 



It must have been about three years later when I 

 made my first decent bag of perch, an occasion never 

 to be forgotten. It was on Shakespeare's Avon, a mile 

 or two above Stratford. The August day was what an 

 August day should be, and a blazing sun had driven 

 me into the shade of some willows which lined the 

 stream. The basket was empty, which was not 

 surprising, the water being clear as glass and the 

 heat intense; even the little fish of seven or eight 

 inches, which at that time satisfied my modest aspira- 

 tions, had declined to nibble at the proffered worm. 



It was, perhaps, the tempting coolness of the deep 

 water under the trees which made me peer round one 

 of them and look down into the stream ; it was certainly 

 a lucky accident which made me aware of vague forms 

 moving in and out, to and fro, below the tangle of 

 roots and red fibres. I gazed fascinated for a time, 

 and at last, as eyes grew accustomed to the play of 

 light through the branches above, made out the identity 

 of the forms ; they were perch, and such a shoal of 

 them as I had never seen before. This ascertained, 



