148 AUTUMNS IN ARGYLESHIRE 



peculiarly vicious tap upon the nose as a punish- 

 ment for the theft of which he had been 

 guilty. 



Have I ever caught two salmon at a time ? 

 Well, never; although I have once known a 

 fish to hook himself upon two flies, taking both 

 with a continuation of the same rise. Of course, 

 with sea or river trout such an adventure is 

 too common to be worth relating, but I have 

 only known one well-authenticated instance with 

 salmon, and then the gillie who gaffed and 

 landed the fish displayed a presence of mind 

 which showed the qualities of a great general. 

 The fish had followed one another kindly in 

 their rushes, and were both exhausted on the 

 surface ; but the crucial question was how to 

 get the one out who had taken the dropper 

 without a dead pull at the line, which would 

 break the cast or the hook between the pair 

 of artificial Siamese twins. As the fish ap- 

 proached the bank, the attendant gaffed it 

 with one hand, and, with an almost simultaneous 

 movement of the other, cut the dropper from 

 the cast with a sharp knife, and was rewarded 

 for his sagacity and luck by seeing the other 

 fish also succumb in a few moments more. If 

 such attendants were common, I might be 

 tempted to forswear my solitary habits. 



The rustic who waits for the river to flow down 

 has passed into a proverb, but those who would 



