So THE PIKE 



it was no pike. It turned out to be a grizzly pated, 

 wolfish jawed, black, reprehensible trout, as antiquated 

 as the hills. I scooped him out with some difficulty 

 in the small net, and it was with true self-denial and 

 .some reluctance that I stuck to the letter of the law 

 and returned him to the water, knowing, as I did, that 

 it would be for the advantage of the stream at large 

 that such an undesirable tenant should be destroyed. 

 There are some pike which never show respectable 

 fight, and a quarter of an hour after my abnegation 

 re the trout I contrived to circumvent one of them. 

 He was lying under a steep, perpendicular bank in 

 dark, lazy water, a dozen yards further down stream 

 than my standpoint, and, as his predecessor had done, 

 he issued forth without flurry or dash as if on an official 

 tour of inspection when my bright bait flashed prettily 

 abreast of him. He adventured in the same way a 

 second time, and as I was smiling at his cautious 

 pursuit of the spinner, another pike a smaller 

 one ascended in haste from the depths, very much 

 like a rising grayling, and was immediately hooked. 

 This jack was as full of pluck as fish could be, 

 and by good hap the hooks were in the lip and the 

 gut trace safe. With the net I could do nothing, 

 and the keeper, who had been with me during 

 my grayling fishing, had gone away for the time, 



