4 8 



SUMMER DAYS ON 



On the bridge stands Enoch, my guide, gaff in hand, a true son 

 of the forest. Sixty winters have not grizzled the heavy mass of 

 brown hair on his face and head, though his body is twisted with 

 the wet and cold. ' Uncle Enoch ' the village imps call him, 

 wondering, with little arms akimbo, as he returns from the river, 

 how many salmon are hid within the leather bag at his side to give 

 his shoulders that unwonted stoop. He wears a drab woollen 

 shirt, open at the neck, half revealing his swarthy breast, and a gift 

 suit of chequered Harris tweed, at least one size too small, so that 

 his lean muscular arms, knotted like whipcords and burned to a 

 brown-black by the summer suns, are exposed almost to the elbow. 

 Nature's elemental forces winds, rains, sun, frost have made the 



UNCLE ENOCH NEGOTIATING A DIFFICULT RAPID GRID-IRON FALCS. 



features of the man too weather-worn and rigid for emotional 

 expression, save that one can notice a somewhat contemptuous 

 upward curl in the corners of the mouth if a fish is handled without 

 due skill or the pool has not been covered in orthodox fashion. 

 A quiet taciturn man is Enoch, as if he knew that a sportsman's 

 first duty was steal thiness and his second silence. A true sportsman, 

 too, most thorough in all his methods. 



' Throw out there in the bubbly water and kiver the whole pool, 

 sir/ is his laconic message, when he notices that I am missing a 

 likely looking eddy where a whirl or two in the sable water, marking 

 sunken boulders which lure a salmon to rest, seem to him to be escap- 

 ing the searching sweep of my Silver Doctor ; and always Uncle 



