268 SALMON AND TROUT. 



years ago when I drove over from Hull to enjoy a day's fishing 

 and dine with the club in the evening, which in those days 

 meant half-past six. I did the twenty-three miles in two hours 

 and a half, and before eight o'clock had stabled my horse at 

 the ' Bell' a cheerful, cosy inn, which I am happy to add still 

 flourishes, for the comfort of anglers, in the old country style. 

 Early as I was, however, the sun was yet earlier, and by the 

 time I had disposed of a substantial breakfast the day was 

 already sultry without the faintest promise of a cloud or breeze. 

 Having exchanged greetings and predictions of empty creels 

 with two or three members of the club who had slept at the 

 inn and were just making their first appearance, I strolled into 

 Dobson's for two or three special flies, and then started for the 

 King's Mill beck the uppermost and liveliest reach of water 

 near the town. Here, however, I found myself forestalled, and 

 fishing in the wake of an angler who ' scatter'd tumult and 

 affray ' along the stream by a lavish exhibition of his person. 

 Nothing went right, and at noon I found myself at Sunderland 

 Wick bridge, with a brace only of fish in my creel, surrounded 

 by still waters and with a blazing sun overhead. No look-out 

 could well be worse. But as I gazed up the beck I caught a 

 gleam of hope. Some thirty yards above the bridge a still 

 back-water joined the main stream, and over the junction 

 drooped a large willow. I missed the tree last year and 

 lamented it as Cowper did his felled poplars. But it was 

 then full of life and leaf, and just outside the sweep of its 

 boughs a legion of gnats were playing. Yes ! there was a rise 

 and there another and anon three or four snouts came to 

 the surface at once. In another minute I was lying on my face 

 by the sedgy bank within a long shot of the enemy, my rod 

 held low, while my single fly, a small black gnat, wavered in 

 the stream far below me. I lay low,' like Brer Fox, till I felt 

 sure that the trout had not taken the alarm, and then on the 

 first ruffling of the water by several consecutive rises dropped 

 my fly with a long horizontal cast just behind the willow. That 

 moment I was fast in a good fish, which I worked steadily 



