254 THE TROUT 



the outside, but sadly waxy within. The Highland 

 hill mutton was not unfrequently unmistakable 

 'braxy' from some wether that had come to an 

 untimely end, to be snatched at the eleventh hour from 

 the beaks of eagles and ravens. But in the deserts 

 the dish of trout was always a sure stand-by, even 

 when the muirfowl were out of season, and the 

 poachers had had ill-luck with the red-deer. We have 

 fallen back, in a caprice, with no small satisfaction 

 upon cookery even more simple and primitive than 

 that. It was a blazing day on the moors \ the scent 

 was bad ; the dogs were dead beat ; there was nothing 

 to be done till the sun sloped down and the birds 

 were stirring again for the afternoon feeding. The 

 cool, shrunken brook, trickling down between the 

 gravel banks scooped out by the floods, looked 

 irresistibly tempting. So the shooting-jacket was cast 

 off, the shirt-sleeves rolled up to the armpits, and we 

 went guddling and groping beneath banks and stones. 

 The troutlets were tossed walloping into the heather 

 almost by handfuls. The heather-roots were dry as 

 tinder, and there was soon what would have been a 

 cheery blaze, had it not been dimmed by the sun-glare. 

 It burned down as fast as it blazed up, and on a couch 

 of soaked bracken, above the smouldering embers, 

 the trout they had been split and gutted were laid 



