i88 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



You lose yourself in dreamy reveries, casting at length 

 quite mechanically. The fly goes out to its appointed 

 place, sweeps round with the stream, and with a kind 

 of involuntary sigh the line is recovered, and the cast 

 repeated. It becomes machine action at last. On this 

 evening I had impressed upon Knut the desirability 

 of being very slow indeed, and he was working well. 

 The stream was strong without rage, there was a dull 

 curtain of slate-grey overhead, and a light breeze was 

 blowing in your teeth, but not enough to make casting 

 twenty-five yards of line a hardship. For a time your 

 thoughts centre upon the working of the fly. You 

 wonder whether a salmon has noticed it and is follow- 

 ing it craftily round ; if so, will he take it ? Or is it 

 possible that after all you are not in the exact lie of 

 the salmon ? 



The water, you see, has not yet become, as it will 

 (and does) in a few days, clear enough for you to know 

 that the entire bed of the river consists of huge boulders, 

 with manifold guts and hollows, all lovely abiding 

 places for any well-disposed fish. You speculate on 

 what you shall do if you do hook a salmon at this or 

 that particular point. You scan the shore, mark the 

 likeliest spot for landing, and mentally go through the 

 whole programme to its happy ending. You think 

 what a splendid thing it would be if you could get four, 

 five, six, a dozen salmon in as many casts, and how 

 much better the bottom of the boat would look if, in- 

 stead of two or three comely grilse, it showed the 

 biggest salmon ever known in these parts. But no, 

 nothing disturbs the monotony. Swish, swish, swish ! 

 Gradually you forget all about salmon and sport, and 

 are thinking, maybe, of kith and kin across the North 

 Sea, or of sins of omission and commission. All at once 

 you are startled by that inspiring cry of the winch 



