36 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



however, must have been on the part of the fish, which 

 went off in a fright deep down with renewed strength, 

 and then it did surrender, a barbel of 6 lb., a somewhat 

 rare fish for the river, and only taken when, as in this 

 case, it had wandered up into the weir pool. 



Having told M. to mind his own business with a 

 minimum of ceremony, it was not surprising that S. 

 was left alone, not exactly to his sport, since, as it 

 happened, the barbel closed his account, unless one or 

 two losses may be included in that definition, and, to 

 give him his due, he was so thorough a fisherman that 

 he did regard losses, shortcomings, and mishaps as 

 legitimate assets in the general game. He had for- 

 gotten in his barbeline absorption to inquire, according 

 to usage, how his comrade had been faring, and did 

 not meet him again till they were in the throat of the 

 lane cottage-wards bound. " Well, old 'un ; what 

 luck with the paternoster ? " he asked, cheerily. M., 

 with a sly twinkle in the eye, said, yes, he had done 

 somewhat ; three pike. It may be premised that the 

 young men had both been trying at intervals for a 

 certain marauding pike reported to them as a ferocious 

 duck destroyer by a gentleman farmer who came down 

 to gossip. He indicated the field and a gravel pit as 

 a guide to the place where his cowman had seen a 

 duckling seized by a pike, and the man embellished his 

 account by swearing that the fish had ploughed his 

 way down the river half out of water, with the ball of 

 feathers bewhiskering his jaws. Manford, it seems, 

 had revenged the raided ducks. A large pike lay at 

 the bottom of his rush basket underneath three jack 

 and a covering of rushes, and it was produced as a 

 crowning show, a golden fish of 17 lb. lured to execu- 

 tion by a live bait. There was talk of nothing else that 

 night but this prize at keeper's cottage, village tap- 



