DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 55 



for a moment, we have been on excellent terms, 

 primarily, I must confess, because the weighty 

 brute has had his will with me. Oh ! if I only had 

 some stronger tackle on there would be a fight 

 I should have some patience with. Stay, I must 

 not forget there is need for the greatest patience 

 with the finest tackle and the glory is greater when 

 one so succeeds. Round and round he travelled, 

 in and out, sometimes so slowly in spite of all my 

 dare of lifting that it might have been the bottom 

 of the pool which was shifting or that the fish by 

 his contemptuous treatment of me meant to say : 

 " Oh ! go and hang yourself or go back to bed." 



There are no means, so far as I know, of meas- 

 uring the length in hours of impotent, agonising 

 minutes. I have taken many trout from where I 

 stood, but only of such a size that I could lift their 

 noses so that their struggles brought them over the 

 apron when they sought its dangerous shelter. No 

 precedent that I could think of seemed of use. I 

 shufflingly shifted my position a yard or two, how 

 many times I do not know, but always to return 

 to the spot that up till then had kept me clear of 

 the serious entanglement I feared. I shortened his 

 rests in sundry places by a wrist strike all I dared 

 but his movements were so slow for such a 

 lengthened period that the strain on my uplifted 

 arm nearly fixed it with cramp and I was glad to 

 give it freedom, by a change of holding, and a flick 

 or two. 



At last, after visiting many times every other 

 portion of the pool, he came towards me beneath 

 the rush of water and, when quite close, came 

 almost to the surface, just where I had hooked him, 



