THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



105 



wave in the water like a maiden's tresses in a 

 summer breeze. 



The mill is a large, grey, irregular building a 

 farmhouse as well as a mill. Its massive walls are 

 stained with age, and the ivy clothes them here and 

 there with a mantle of glossy green. The huge, 

 black, moss-stained wheel creaks slowly around. 

 It is an overshot wheel, and the water pours down 

 upon it from the sluice above in an iron-grey 

 column, broken and changed into silver as it 

 splashes and drips from the floats of the wheel. 

 To the left is a broad sloping weir of great height, 

 down which the water dashes with a thousand 

 sparkles, and boils and bubbles in the great pool 

 beneath, whence it is glad to slip quietly away over 

 the sleepily waving weeds. 



From beneath the wheel, the water, having done 

 its work for the present, hurries away deep and 

 black along a narrow channel, overhung with water 

 docks and grasses, knotted rushes, and "water 

 scorpions " (which, when the blue flowers smile at 

 us we call forget-me-nots), until it rejoins its parent 

 stream a little lower down. Here, experience has 

 taught us, there will be a great trout lurking, and 

 we take two of our flies off our cast, leaving only 

 one, that they may not catch in the rushes 

 and spoil our sport. Then creeping on hands 

 and knees through the cool meadow grasses, we 

 cautiously cast our fly upon the narrow torrent. 

 At the third cast there is a quiet circle in the 



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