PREFACE. xi, 



the oak settle in an ingle nook, with a bright eye and a 

 fresh face, beneath an ancient hat that might have been 

 built in a dry dock, and a coat white with the dust of the 

 little mill that has crooned its lullaby through the drowsy 

 noontides of a hundred summers, the while the laughing 

 river chorused his own and his father's songs. 



"Aye, for sure," he says, "come Michaelmas, Fse be 

 eighty, an' I can catch troot yit ; I doan't see 'em quite 

 like I used to could, but what ! I isn't done ; Fse hev mony 

 a day at the river yit, an 't please the Almighty." 



Then he tells me of a fine fish caught by one of my 

 friends. 



" It was a reyt good trout ; but what ! that's two months 

 sin f , and it were three pund weight then ; and what it's 

 gotten to by this time, may be ye can reckon as weel as I 

 can, for ye knaw a big fish is a thing 'at graws terble fast 

 when it's once oot o' t' watter." 



You may see this same old fellow to-morrow lifting up 

 little children to see the eggs in a throstle's nest, or bearing 

 one on his shoulder while he stands still, pointing heaven- 

 ward, that she may hear a lark sing. 



I was going one day along a highway, when an old man 

 breaking stones by the roadside roused himself at the sight 

 of my fishing tackle, and asked where I was going to fish. 

 I told him in a mill pond not far distant. He recommended 

 me to go and fish a beck close by, and pointed in the direc- 

 tion in which it lay, a few fields away. I knew all the fields 

 and all the becks in the neighbourhood, but I knew nothing 

 of this. 



" Are there fish there ? " I said. 



" Eh, bless ye ! " was his answer, " I geet 2olb. weight of 

 trout there one morning afore breakfast." 



" When was that ? " I enquired. The old man paused a 

 minute while he rummaged the lumber-room of his past, and 

 then said : 



