34> AN EVENING AT BELLEEK. 



force out a line as he does. But what have 

 you been about yourselves? It strikes me 

 that I saw an empty larder as I passed 

 through the kitchen just now." 



" Not a tail — not a rise — and yet I was 

 fishing in the most promising place of the 

 whole river ; a fine open pool, contracted to- 

 wards the lower end by a ruined eel-weir, 

 and breaking away into a thundering rapid. 

 I cannot conceive how it was that I rose 

 nothing. It is a most lovely place, too, for 

 a sentimental poet or romancer, surrounded 

 with rocks, and feathering trees, and hanging 

 banks, with a beautiful smooth level sward 

 of turf near the stream — just the very place 

 for a water-nymph, ' shut out from the world 

 and secluded from the gaze of man.' There 

 is not a place from which you can see it 

 except from the high rocks above the Cap- 

 tain's Throw."* 



" And I do believe," broke in the Parson, 

 " that he has been toiling all the day at the 



* Salmon will rise only in particular depths of 

 water, which must be neither too deep, nor too rapid, 

 nor too slow, nor too shallow for them. These places 

 are technically called " throws," and frequently bear 

 the name of some eminent fisherman. 



