192 ANGLING & ART IN SCOTLAND 



Mr. A followed on, perhaps a hundred yards 



behind, both boats making for the head of the loch. 



On arriving at the bay where the reported inci- 

 dent had taken place, we cut straight across its 

 mouth, thinking that it would be only waste of time 

 to hunt into the shallows. But of course the inde- 

 fatigable Mr. A was not of a like mind, for we 



saw his boat religiously following the contour of 

 the shore, and, to our chagrin, a^ the very spot 

 where we had informed him the leviathan had been 

 hooked on the previous evening, he himself hooked 

 a heavy fish — for we could see the splash it made 

 as it plunged behind the boat I 



It turned out to be a very fine twelve-pound 

 ferox, which took him, if I remember rightly, about 

 an hour and three-quarters to land I And he did 

 not at all seem inclined to enter into the spirit of 

 the jest when Paddy endeavoured to prove to him, 

 in the carriage on the homeward journey, that half 

 the fish belonged to him, as he maintained that if 

 he had not tired it out so thoroughly on the pre- 

 ceding night, Mr. A would never have landed it 



at all. 



The consummation of his dearest hopes in thus 

 compassing the death of a ferox did not, as might 



