To Mountain Tarn 



boulders of a brawling Highland stream. She 

 was known to be eccentric. 



Trouting is, on the whole, the gentler sport. 

 It bears the same relation to salmon fishing as 

 hawking with the merlin and the peregrine. 

 Trout is the lady's fish, as the merlin, was the 

 lady's hawk. Stalwart men find the art and 

 charm to be as great, or greater. Tackle and 

 lure alike are more delicate. The conditions, 

 atmospheric or otherwise, under which trout will 

 rise, and the argument to be used for the day, are 

 of the subtlest. One must look to the sky, and 

 from the patches of blue to the travelling cloud ; 

 to the gleam on the water with the chasing 

 shadow, measuring the interval between ; to the 

 insect life dancing in the air and dipping to the 

 current. The fly, most like these creatures of a 

 day and a dance, must be dropped where the ring 

 breaks, in the sunless moment when the gleam 

 has passed. Under the covert of the shadow, 

 deeper by contrast, the trout will rise. 



Evanescent elements spoil the reckoning 

 changes of mood, so sudden as to seem like 

 caprice. Hours there are when the rise should 

 come and does not. Other unpromising hours 

 when a churning is on the surface. The angler 

 notes how cloud and wind and water were thus 

 and thus when the play was merry ; and when 

 cloud and wind and water are thus again, goes 

 back to find the play dull. A sharp shower 



