2 6 BY MEADOW AND STREAM. 



the Major said to me three or four days before Easter, 

 11 Will you go a-fishing ?" I responded with alacrity, 

 * * I will " and so it was that on Thursday, March 

 3Oth, we found ourselves on the banks of the ever- 

 pleasant Itchin. My old henchman was there, hale 

 and hearty and eighty-two as he often told me, and 

 ready with net and basket. It was in full stream, 

 bright and clear as crystal but the fish were not * ' on 

 the rise." Dry fly-fishing was not practicable, our 

 only chance being to fish the stream a kind of fishing 

 which the accomplished Major somewhat despises. 

 He prefers crouching on bended knees half an hour 

 at a time waiting for a rise, and then to drop his 

 deadly fly, dry and floating, just above that fated 

 trout, which would of course soon find his way to 

 creel. But in this very bright weather even the Major 

 soon grew tired of his favourite method, and, like me, 

 he mostly devoted himself to the streams and rippling 

 shallows. Fishing in this way and wading down 

 stream, casting straight across and allowing the fly to 

 float down slightly under the rippling water, I was the 

 first to get a rise, and a nice half-pound trout came 

 into old Davis's net. This was a fair beginning. I 

 soon hooked another and brought him in, but, alas ! 

 he was a grayling of a pound and more out of season, 

 he had to go back with grace to grow bigger, please 

 goodness, to give me another chance at him next 

 autumn. 



And now our troubles began. The Major was un- 

 fortunate, he caught one l^lb. trout, and then neither 

 of us could catch anything but grayling. " Confound 

 these grayling, " we said; "what right have they to 



