194 IN HIGHLAND WATERS 



frequented by these fish, how much to be blamed were 

 I if any minor considerations of mere business prevailed 

 to delay my access to the land of the Gael ? Never- 

 theless, a fisherman's notion of fine weather is not 

 exactly identical with that of a lover or a landscape 

 painter. The cloudless skies of July and the wide 

 mirrors of the lakes do not perfectly fulfil his ideal. 

 He sighs for the cloud low on the hill, the sough of the 

 south-west wind on the shore, the burns racing in 

 milky garlands through a hundred little glens. 



The last sun of July sank in splendour behind the 

 steepled crests of Rum. Waking on August 1st, my 

 ears were full of sound, the silence of many weeks was 

 broken. The mountain opposite the window was 

 blotted from view; in the foreground the ash-trees 

 waved their arms and whimpered in the breeze. It 

 was raining not heavily, but steadily. My plan was 

 perfected in three minutes, two of which were spent in 

 such hesitation as the donkey feels between two bundles 

 of hay. There was a river within a quarter of a mile 

 of my bedside a river which had tinkled trivially 

 among its shingle for a month past, but one which four 

 hours of good rain would put in fishing trim ; a river 

 from which, even during the drought, I had extracted 

 sundry lovely sea-trout ; a river in which I had descried 

 many salmon sulkily sheltering from the heat. 

 Throughout the whole of July this stream had swollen 

 but once: 'A wee bit o' a spate/ as the head stalker 

 gloomily observed, 'just snappit up by the Sabbath.' 



The sensible course would have been to breakfast 



