THE ANGLERS SOUVENIR. 



193 



lad to crawl through. This place we named 

 " Mouse-hole," and on the top we erected a hut, 

 in which, on holiday afternoons, we sat, like gods 

 at ease, watching the puny world below. 



Nor, when we crossed over to the other side 

 of the ruins, and, facing the sturdy buffets of the 

 wind, looked over the assemblage of hills green 

 in the foreground, and broken with iron-grey slate 

 quarries, and, in the distance, blue and uncertain 

 in outline was the scene less suggestive. 



But a truce to these memories, which, though 

 sweet to us, are of little interest to you. Behold 

 us, therefore, on the banks of the narrow, clear 

 canal, beginning, as we began in our pinafore 

 times, to angle for gudgeon. There were plenty 

 of caddis worms, or " corbets," as we called them 

 formerly, creeping about at the bottom of the 

 water, close to the margin ; and, drawing one out 

 of its case, we put the plump, white grub on our 

 hook. The gudgeons were nosing about on the 

 gravel in companies of a dozen or two ; and as 

 the bait floated by them, one darted aside at it 

 with a silvery flash, and was twitched out. In a 

 short time we had caught a dozen of all sizes, 

 from that of a minnow to six inches in length. 

 Having thus procured plenty of bait, we turned 

 our fly-rod into something more like a spinning- 

 rod, by substituting a stouter top joint, and then, 

 rigging up some spinning tackle, mounted on gut, 

 we baited with a gudgeon, and commenced to trail 



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