no AN OPEN CREEL 



memory of native man. The March brown is the fly, 

 and a big basket is a certainty so says local wisdom 

 as it leans on the parapet. These are just the innocent 

 fish that a fond fancy had conjured up in London 

 chambers, though it had not estimated the mountains 

 to be so high or the leagues so long ; in the Metropolis 

 a mountain comes vaguely before one's mental vision 

 as something after the pattern of Primrose Hill, while 

 a league is merely twenty minutes' drive in the direc- 

 tion of West Kensington. These conceptions, of course, 

 prove to be inadequate, and it takes two good hours 

 and a half to get to the lake two hours and a half 

 quite fully occupied on steep and slippery turf and 

 amid prickly gorse-bushes. However, the tableland of 

 the second mountain is at last attained, the two miles 

 of comparatively level ground are covered with greater 

 ease, and the lake comes into view. It is not large 

 about a quarter of a mile across is almost round, and 

 absolutely treeless, except for two or three shrubs that 

 grow on a little island near the farther shore. The 

 prevailing note in the colouring is yellow; the sun 

 shines yellow, the banks are yellow, and the bottom is 

 yellow. In the foreground, however, is a touch of 

 black a small boathouse, of which the men of the 

 valley said nothing. There is no boat in it, and its use 

 is not clear. There is no house in miles, and it seems 

 a long distance to come for a row, especially if there is 

 no boat to row in when you get there. Perhaps some 

 sportsman once thought of establishing an estate up 

 here, and began with the boathouse ; or perhaps it is 

 not a boathouse at all, but something to do with 

 Druids, and of greater age than it looks ; or perhaps 



