12 SALMON FISHING 



what has chanced on the foreign Stock Exchanges ? 

 or whether some crisis in international statecraft is 

 being composed or becoming acute? O no; all 

 these have become affairs of no importance. It is 

 the Weather Forecast that is wanted. If it is favour- 

 able in relation to needs of the time, all is well : this 

 man, no longer a mere merchant prince, a gleeful 

 schoolboy for the nonce, pictures to himself, and to 

 me, the water at exactly the proper level, the wind 

 in precisely the right direction, and the sky in ideal 

 shades. If the forecast is unfavourable, why, all 

 may still be well. The Meteorological Office is an 

 absurd department. Over and over again it has 

 gone wrong. It says, " Variable light airs, or calm ; 

 a continuance of dry weather may be expected"; 

 but just look at the clouds ! Isn't that a watery 

 moon ? Without doubt there's rain in the wind. 

 The whole Highlands may be in a flood before we 

 touch at Stirling. A slight tendency to doze over- 

 takes him when we have crossed the Ochils ; but it 

 is not what it seems. High spirits are not exhausted. 

 We do not now need to quit our seats until the 

 journey is ended, and the butterfly sleep is only a 

 way of saying to himself that we are practically at 

 the riverside. At breakfast, after a bath and change 

 of clothes, the gamekeeper, to our town-jaded eyes 

 and ears a man of singularly brisk aspect and in- 

 telligence, sits, cap in hand, a cheerful glass before 

 him, assuring us, in elaborate detail, that the river 

 never was in better ply or so much astir with fresh- 

 run fish. 



