170 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



to regard him as an enemy to my peace of mind, 

 to picture him to myself as an incarnation of all 

 the vices, to feel that to rid the river of his accursed 

 presence was a sacred duty I had conceived a 

 positive hatred of him. Yet, as I poised the net 

 handle above his skull I caught his eye, and it 

 unmanned me as the eye of C. Marius unmanned 

 the Gaul whom they sent to dispatch him. Brari- 

 Newcome's eye was an honest eye, the eye of a 

 decent, peaceable, hardworking stay-at-home. In 

 it I read none of that extreme malevolence towards 

 myself with which I had credited him. There 

 was not even resentment in it. It was only the 

 silly frightened eye of a fish out of water. He 

 did not know who or what I was. Did he so 

 much as connect me with his present inability 

 to breathe? My estimate of Bran-Newcome's 

 character changed as suddenly as it had been 

 formed gradually. No ; our relations had grown 

 too personal, too intimate. I was taken with a 

 kind of shame to think that I could meditate the 

 assassination of this companion of so many good 

 hours by the water. Even as the Gaul threw 

 away his sword, so I threw away my net, and I 

 cried aloud : " I cannot slay Bran-Newcome ! " 

 I laid him in the stream ; he swam slowly away ; 

 and I have never seen him again. 



I used to do silly things like that in those 



