22 MOSTLY ABOUT TROUT 



sportsman who gave me the first chance of 

 seeing real country ; I had had the great mis- 

 fortune to spend my childhood in a town. On 

 the great occasion it occurred to him to entrust 

 to my care a ten-foot greenheart fly-rod, made 

 by Farlow, and, I think, about thirty years old, 

 with a hollow butt to contain the spare top. 

 I had no landing-net. Every step of that walk 

 it was about fifty years ago comes back to 

 me now. First a short-cut across a grass field 

 and through a gate to the main road near three 

 Scotch fir-trees. Then about three-quarters of 

 a mile along a dusty road, soft to the foot, and 

 then, at last, the trout stream. It was the 

 Ewenny, and I had leave to fish the Ewenny 

 water. There was a little pool below a hatch, 

 and above the hatch the main stream, with its 

 level raised by an embankment. Both pool and 

 stream were ruffled by a gentle up-stream breeze. 

 With infinite care I had managed, with the 

 help of my uncle, to attach three small flies 

 to a cast of gut of a thickness that I should 

 not dare to offer to the trout of this generation. 

 This cast I remembered to soak carefully, and 

 made it fast to an old-fashioned plaited silk 

 and hair line, with occasional ends of horsehair 

 sticking out where it had become worn : an 

 abomination in these days, but a delight in 



