SALMON FISHING IN LABRADOR. 191 



fish that had worsted me at my own game. Not being 

 in the best of humour, of course Jock was out of the 

 way and not within hailing distance. What a capital 

 chance to vent the balance of my spleen, not at all 

 improved by the confounded flies, whose attacks, since 

 I had ceased to be employed, became more noticeable ; 

 in truth, if it were possible, I doubt not that I should 

 have liked to saddle the boy with his absence being the 

 cause of my mishaps. After several times shouting 

 his name he at length appeared, hat in hand, bare- 

 headed, with a smile of childlike satisfaction on his 

 face that, even in my irate state, I had not the 

 heart to destroy. To my inquiry where he had been, 

 with a look of satisfaction he informed me he had 

 found and harried a nest, producing his hat full of the 

 stolen treasures. After giving him a lecture on the 

 impropriety of such a course, and the probabilities of 

 his being devoured by wolves and bears, or even canni- 

 bals, if he left my side, I could not help making an in- 

 spection of what his bonnet contained. Truly he had a 

 hat full, for upwards of a dozen pale cinnamon blotched 

 eggs, a trifle larger than those of the domestic pigeon, 

 lay at the bottom. The nest and parent bird, from de- 

 scription, left me in no doubt that Master Jock had 

 deprived some luckless Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus albus) 

 of her embryo brood ; and after lecturing him on the 



