ROB OF THE TROUGHS. 179 



Rob, having broke the line, which got twisted round 

 his leg, and made his escape, to his great disappoint- 

 ment and loss, for at the price clean salmon were then 

 selling, he could have got five pounds for it. 



Thus you see how a large fish may manage us. 



I must tell you that the above-mentioned Robert 

 Kerse has long been a distinguished character on the 

 Tweed. At a secluded spot, where the woods and 

 rocks dip down to the margin of the river, and where 

 its current is opposed by a rocky barrier through which 

 it has worn its way in frightful gorges, the gaunt figure 

 of auld Rob of the Troughs has been seen any time these 

 forty years. He is very tall and bony, and when work- 

 ing his boat with the canting pole amongst the rapids, or 

 looking down on the water from a jutting rock with his 

 leister aloft ready to strike, he cuts a most formidable 

 Salvator Rosa-like appearance. Rob is now highly sea- 

 soned with the saltness of time, being nearer eighty than 

 seventy years old ; drinks whiskey like water, his native 

 element ; and to this day runs after the hounds, when 

 they come near, like a boy of fifteen. He is a genuine 

 lover of all sports, and has begot numerous sons and 

 daughters : of the former four are game keepers, and 

 fishermen on Tweed, Tiviot, and Ettrick, to the Duke of 

 Buccleuch, Lord Lothian, and Lord Home. They are 

 remarkable as claiming a regular descent from Saxon 

 ancestors in the most remote times, and are an active, 

 athletic, clean-limbed race of men, keen of eye, and 

 swift of foot, of good pluck, and altogether amphibious, 

 loving the heather and mountain flood better than the 

 street and servants' hall. Stalwart men would they 



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