272 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



strong to begin with, the fishing soon became good 

 indeed. That it was so when the alderman and I visited 

 the chalet, quotation from the article already tapped 

 for present use may testify : 



" The sport was so good that the details would become 

 monotonous. I say nothing about the baskets made 

 by the two friends who also fished, save that my host 

 and myself were, at the end, close within touch of one 

 another's totals. We went afloat after breakfast and 

 fished till luncheon ; went out again when the sun 

 was declining, fishing from about seven till nine. As 

 I have stated, my first evening (which was particularly 

 interesting, because there I was at the other end of 

 Belgium catching fish at the hour corresponding with 

 that of the previous day when I was taking my seat 

 in the Great Eastern express for Harwich at Liverpool 

 Street) accounted for twelve trout ; the next day's 

 bag was forty-eight (twenty-six in the forenoon and 

 twenty-two in the evening) ; the following day's was 

 fifty (twenty-two in the forenoon, twenty-eight in the 

 evening) ; and on the last day, which was rough as to 

 wind till the afternoon, my record was fourteen in the 

 forenoon and thirty-one in the evening quiet. 



" My host had a good deal of correspondence to attend 

 to, and I was often out alone, but his gillie reported 

 that he had placed in the great floating well moored off 

 the veranda 273 fish, the produce of our two rods 

 during the period specified. These figures must not be 

 accepted as evidence of greedy fishing or anything of 

 that kind, nor are they written down in boastfulness. 

 They are given simply because they record the story of 

 the stocking, and because the sport, which, on the face 

 of it, looks not unlike slaughter, was part of the neces- 

 sary work of keeping down the head of fish in the lake. 



