CASTING AS A BEGINNER. 17 



yet not a touch of any fly I offered them ! 

 With back half paralysed by casting in this 

 uncomfortable position and with grasp well nigh 

 gone, I staggered up, got back to the bank and 

 again tried in the growing darkness to secure 

 one only one to take home. But no, not even 

 a sedge or a governor would they look at, so 

 with angry heart, empty creel and damp scant 

 I tramped the three weary miles home never 

 to fish again. 



* * * * * 



Well, as we know, time heals all that, and 

 the next day at teatime I was at the village inn 

 half-a-mile from the aforesaid weir pool, putting 

 together the maligned rod and the execrated 

 line and affixing thereto the same accursed blue 

 upright which had done such execution in dis- 

 tracting trout the evening before. Tea, 

 Devonshire cream and a new mixture of 

 tobacco had somehow combined to make the 

 sight of the river palatable, and laughing at 

 my feat of the previous evening I was even 

 able to bear the sight of the green water 

 viewed from the bridge parapet upon which on 

 such a night as this promised to be, had the 

 vicar of that old-world parish laid out exactly 

 a year before glistening in the early June moon- 

 light four trout each one over the full pound 

 caught with two others of smaller size while 

 sauntering hatless up the meadow below the 

 weir, clad in dinner suit and evening shoes. 

 His plan was to throw a dry fly left-handed 

 over a low fringe of nasty bushes which nearly 



