A GRAYLING DAY 161 



orange, a Warwick pippin, and one or two little 

 russets. Then a few minutes' rest, with an 

 old pipe drawing well and plenty to look at. 

 This part of the valley is a sanctuary for wild 

 duck, and besides them the moorhens are 

 worth watching ; so are the water-rats, falsely 

 so-called. Then over the stile, through a 

 withy-bed, and the best place of all for the 

 grayling, which are rising well again now. A 

 wide shallow below a picturesque mill, with a 

 few autumn flowers still surviving in the garden, 

 the old church tower showing up behind, and 

 alongside me, across a marshy bit trodden down 

 by passing cattle, is the valley road, with a 

 friend of old days passing occasionally and ex- 

 changing greetings and items of village news. 



I spend an hour or so at this spot amongst 

 the persistently rising grayling. They differ 

 from trout in that way ; it is always worth 

 while going on putting the same fly over them, 

 and nothing seems to put them down, probably 

 because they stay deeper in the water, excepting 

 just at the moment of a rise, and so see less 

 of what is going on in the air above. The big 

 fin and the air-bladder help them to come up 

 almost vertically when they rise. I lay out 

 my catch. Nice, clean, silvery fish, with a 

 faint scent of wild-thyme. Each one glittered 



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