26 TROUT FISHING 



The gates were open but I had hoped he would stay 

 where he was. So far as I know he was staying 

 there. It was not the bull, but merely the bank, 

 which had caught the infection from my example 

 and was tobogganing on its own account. 



I then felt a nervous desire to imagine the sort 

 of story Mr. Algernon Blackwood or Mr. Hope 

 Hodgson might make out of the incident. There 

 is a pool on a salmon river of my acquaintance which 

 is called " Sliding Braes," and it occurred to me 

 that a peculiarly frightful ghost story might be hung 

 onto such a name. Imagine the angler, in the 

 gathering dusk, pursued by a bank ! " And then, 

 in that extraordinary hush, which I can only describe 

 as a vortex of silence in which I was the helpless 

 centre, I knew that something was going to happen 

 Looking up from where I was, waist-deep, I saw 

 as it were an undulation, an expanding and con- 

 tracting of the solid clay that frowned down upon 

 me. Frowned that is the word. It was literally 

 a frown. If you can imagine eyebrows twenty 

 yards long ! What happened afterwards I shall 

 never clearly remember. That portentous face 

 seemed to grow upwards and outwards. It bulged 

 at me as you may have seen the face of Aeolus 

 bulging in old prints. Great swollen cheeks ! And 

 then came the sliding down. The great slab 

 lips . . ." 



