THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 73 



but at a quarter past nine they stopped, only 

 a few dark rings under the shade of the rushes 

 on the right being made from time to time. 

 The last fish I had to slip into my boot, and 

 it worked down so far that a visit to the bank 

 became necessary. If only the creel were not 

 hanging in the verandah at home what an 

 opening there seemed for picking up two or 

 three lumpers in the dusk. 



To get the three prizes into two knotted 

 handkerchiefs and to carry them in one hand 

 was a difficult matter. It was no use putting 

 them into the net; besides its mesh was not 

 too safe, as it had been repaired with common 

 string that afternoon. Hot with excitement, 

 dripping with the various burdens of fish, rod 

 and mackintosh, I thought perhaps for the 

 first time in my life that I had enough. 



Deep * ploops ' sounded from time to time 

 close under my own bank as I stumbled on, 

 and twice I set down the impedimenta and 

 threw for the rising fish. It was a mile and 

 a half to the inn, the nearest way being up 

 the single railway line, so by the time I had 

 laboured over the wire fencing, dropping all 

 three fish in the thistles and the dark, I felt 

 fairly well done up, bathed in perspiration, and 

 desperately hungry. Sitting down on the rails 

 to cool I noticed that nearly every other sleeper 

 was lighted by a glow worm; twenty or thirty 

 I counted on the way back, and although a 

 pair of fern owls were hawking round I never 

 saw one taken. It was nearly eleven before the 



