DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 291 



recognition as of one who had long since known 

 their merits and was glad to see something old- 

 fashioned reappear. "A white worm on one av 

 thim, plaise " carried conviction by its tone and 

 what resulted proved there was wisdom in his 

 choice. He knew, too, the depths to which our 

 lines would sink, and asked for their raising and 

 their dropping as the fishing ground demanded. I 

 might have left my chart at home, nor did I need 

 to make much call upon my own experience as, 

 when with Tony, I was learning. His familiar 

 knowledge of the haunts and habits of the fish 

 prompted me to remember and to tell him of his 

 sainted namesake and how he, in the intervals of 

 the devil's harassing temptations, went to the sea 

 to give to the fishes the sermons to which the 

 heathen would not listen and so influenced them 

 that they moved, and even bowed, at his bidding. 

 " Thin it's a powerful pracher he was and the saints 

 thimselves best know how he came to be named 

 afther me. Ach the praching ! " 



He said this so sorrowfully that I was compelled 

 to fear that he had been made to listen to preaching 

 in his youth when he would have preferred to have 

 been elsewhere. I had some sympathy for this as 

 it caused me to remember the lengthy sermons I in 

 no way understood and the much-offered box for 

 the coin I had spent in toffee. But Mike was 

 interested in St Anthony and desired to know if 

 his riverence wore bathing drawers, and " would he 

 kape a fish that got inside thim ? " 



I am not easily discouraged and I so longed to 

 make the ancient face put on a smile that I really 

 should be pardoned for having tried just once more. 



