124 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



the broken water was so lessening that I determined to 

 either mend or end the business by a gift of the butt. 



" Go below, Guthrie, and I'll bring him in," was the 

 word ; and the old man soon got his opportunity, not 

 to lift it out in the ordinary way, but to clap the net 

 upon it as it struggled on the shallow, and pin it most 

 cleverly to the shingle, hauling it out without acci- 

 dent. It was only done in the nick of time ; two yards 

 farther down would have been ruin. Everybody said 

 it was a perfectly shaped specimen of the bright autumn 

 Tweed salmon. 



The season, as a whole, that year on Tweed was what, 

 in the mildest form of regret, is termed " disappoint- 

 ing," though our old friend, Henry Ffennell, in his 

 annual statement of large salmon, was able to mention 

 a goodly proportion of heavy fish in the autumn. But 

 that particular back-end was bad during October and 

 November on most of the beats below Kelso. A few 

 days after I had returned to the glories of Windsor 

 House, and had Bream's-buildings as the choicest of 

 handy landscapes, I realised the vast pleasure of learn- 

 ing in " Tweedside's " weekly report from Kelso, 

 which I was reading in a November fog that pervaded 

 the entire office, that Mr. Gilbey had been fortunate 

 in catching a 42-lb. salmon at Carham, his best fish to 

 that date, and, I think, the best Tweed fish of that 

 season. It was taken on a salmon fly bearing the 

 troutsome name of Orange Dun, and it was a fancy 

 pattern worked out as I understood, by Tarn Sligh, one 

 of the veteran gillies of Tweedside. This fly was a 

 very taking harmony in yellow, and Mr. Gilbey was 

 fishing with one of the small sizes on a single gut collar. 

 The salmon was hooked near the Bell Rock, a favourite 

 autumn cast under the right bank down by the woods 

 below the hut. For some time the angler did not 



