34 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



was a noted slowcoach. With this knowledge, and 

 the presence under his eye of a basket containing 

 ground-bait kneaded in the woodhouse while the 

 breakfast rashers were frying, S. opined that he 

 might snatch an hour or so of honest reaching in 

 the backwater while the rabbit people were getting 

 ready. 



The roach master eventually came to the rendezvous, 

 indeed, with a dozen and five of those beautifully 

 graded roach which are between three-quarters and half 

 pound, and which, when they are " on the feed," run 

 marvellously even in size and quality. M. did not now 

 concern himself about the roach. He was no longer a 

 Waltonian ; his mind had taken the tone of the keeper's. 

 Yesterday his soul was of the fish, fishy ; to-day it was 

 full of muzzle-loaders, nets, and ferrets. But he, too, 

 had his reward, and S. noticed that as they plodded 

 athwart a fallow he looked out keenly and knowingly 

 for feathered or four-footed game as if he were Colonel 

 Hawker in person, and not the patient paternosterer 

 with downcast eye. After S. had witnessed his bright 

 eye and upstanding boldness when he brought the 

 single-barrel to shoulder and dropped a gloriously 

 burnished woodpigeon at long shot, he conceived an 

 enhanced respect for him evermore, and was endued 

 with a spirit of toleration to watch the coming opera- 

 tions, in which he took no part. 



Nets were pegged down ; there was much talk of 

 bolt holes between the keeper and the rustic shockhead 

 working on different sides of the bank, and M. and the 

 dog Spider had vision and thought for nothing but 

 the open holes they guarded. It transpired that the 

 keeper wanted rabbits for commerce. The couples that 

 speedily met fate in the nets were insufficient. He re- 

 quired fifteen couple. M. rolled over a white scut with 



