130 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



the edge of Looscaunagh Lough very hard to leave. 

 Derwentwater in reflective calm, in tears, in raging 

 storm, yields its pictorial charms one by one to him 

 who lives among them, not in a farmhouse built to 

 secure comfort in winter, but in the nominal summer 

 shelter of a bit of canvas. 



It needs not that last sentence to scare the case- 

 hardened townsman to whom the four walls that 

 emphatically do "a prison make" have become second 

 nature. He is beyond the cure of the complete change. 

 To ask him to live in a region destitute of such 

 essential institutions as the fishmonger's slab, the 

 poulterer's dresser, the tin of milk on the door- 

 step, would be cruelty without kindness. But the 

 topsy-turvy person to whom the pavements are an 

 incubus and conveniences a nuisance longs for a 

 proper excuse for the practice of the most difficult 

 methods of supplying his wants. It is the fashion 

 for the sportsman to sneer at the pot-hunter. But 

 in camp we learn that sportsman and pot-hunter are 

 complements of the complete man. The fly is never 

 properly cast when we don't quite know what we 

 shall do with the fish, presuming that we happen 

 to land him. When we know that the camp-fire is 

 already lit for the trout it is our bounden duty to catch, 

 the boil of a rising fish means three times as much 

 as it does to the idle angler. And the man who is 

 out to fill a frying-pan knows exactly when his 

 angling has reached its legitimate end. Then he can 

 wind up his tackle and watch without a particle of 

 envy his brother, the kingfisher, securing a meal in 

 his own way. And as he walks home he sees the 

 cheery dipper dashing under water in quest of insects, 



