CLEAR WATERS 



conduced to this. But my new friend's performance 

 was a revelation and his floating fly was another, for I 

 must ask the reader again to remember that this was 

 thirty years ago. Well, he got that fish, and then he 

 spotted another and got that, and then another, 

 and secured that one too. We had then reached the 

 mill, where we had our lunch and a pipe and some 

 illuminating conversation. My companion now 

 realised my benighted condition, and I learned for the 

 first time that things had been happening on the chalk 

 streams, though they hadn't yet struck the upper 

 Kennet on which for three or four days in the year I 

 cast my two wet flies with tolerable success and perfect 

 satisfaction, as I have already intimated. 



It is quite certain that the trout there at any rate 

 had not yet become disabused of their absurd old- 

 fashioned notions. I don't think they have wholly 

 abandoned them even yet in spite of London syndi- 

 cates whose members, when they think no one is 

 looking, often fish a wet fly down stream, for I have 

 myself seen them at it. But in those days, before the 

 syndicates, there was a glorious interlude, after the old 

 marquis, alluded to in the first chapter, excellent 

 man, but absent-minded about fishing, was laid in the 

 vaults of his fathers. For another marquis succeeded, 

 who somehow realised, good soul as he was, that three 

 or four miles of as excellent trouting as there was in 

 England was intended by providence to be enjoyed. 

 So any local angler, past or present, of which there 

 were then mighty few, was treated very handsomely. 

 With another regime came still worse times in agri- 

 culture, and with them the alien syndicates or their 

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