THE MICROBE 



man who was here lord of all. He sat down on the 

 bank beside me, mighty Nimrod and celebrated shot 

 though he was, and discoursed learnedly on the best 

 baits for roach. I soon let him know, however, that 

 roach were not the limit of my aspirations or indeed 

 of my trophies, and, in short, that I was only in pursuit 

 of them for pike bait, following up with an account 

 of the recent triumphs. ' Pike ! ' said he. ' You 

 don't mean it ! How many have you taken out of 

 here ? ' 



' Fourteen,' said I without a thought that so 

 wonderful an achievement would be accounted as 

 aught but a merit. 



' The devil you have ! and that I believe is about 

 the number I put in here last Easter to stock the pond. 

 Hang it ! That is the precise number ! There are 

 none left ! ' 



I felt like taking an immediate leap into the pond 

 and remaining there. 



After a truly painful silence he began, to my infinite 

 relief, to laugh loudly, swore I was a dangerous chap 

 to be about, that he would tell his uncle (my host) to 

 send me home or I should be cleaning out the big lake 

 next, and so on. 



Oddly enough I never caught but one more pike 

 in my whole life, and that was the very next year, and 

 it weighed almost as much as the whole fourteen 

 from the marlpit. On this occasion I was staying 

 with friends in south Devon, and we drove over one 

 day to Slapton Ley, that curious freshwater mere only 

 divided from the sea by a strip of beach. My kind 

 host, almost as an afterthought and purely for my 



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