WADING. 121 



And now it is a week and a year later. ' I 

 like to be particular in dates ' the eleventh of 

 July. It was not only a summer's day, but 

 one of really tropical splendour, like that sixth 

 of June which Dona Julia had cause for remem- 

 bering so well. 



We had agreed that it was useless to 

 attempt day fishing, even when a ticket for the 

 preserved water figured temptingly on the mantel 

 piece. Although the river was low, it had been 

 thoroughly freshened up by a week of con- 

 tinuous wet weather, and had not as yet run 

 down to its summer level. 



We had heard peal jump on the two previous 

 evenings that startling sound in the dusk, as 

 though someone had thrown a brick into a quiet 

 pool and it had grazed your heart in passing. 

 I had accordingly looked out and mounted a 

 fly suited to the occasion, a luscious caterpillary 

 reddish brown creature, on a hook the size of 

 a mayfly. This, threaded on to a strand of 

 undrawn gut, or better still mounted on a 

 separate six foot cast, is all that is requisite, as 

 it can then be used from nine-thirty until ten 

 o'clock or later, according to the hopes or 

 delusions of the angler. 



To hook a peal on rod and fly, on the free 

 water, is an event nowadays of perhaps only 

 weekly occurrence, but on the night in question 

 I was fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to hook 

 two, each of about a pound and a half that is 

 the commonest size and lose them both ; the 

 first jumping on to the bank, and off again in 



