EPISODICAL 215 



promising afternoon. Returning to the inn, whose water 

 he had been fishing, he was met by the kindly hostess with 

 the offer " Brauchen Sie dies" ("Use this"). This was 

 a three-piece rod of assorted parentage. The butt was 

 from a green-heart pike rod of sorts, the middle joint came 

 from a Castleconnell of uncertain age, and was fastened 

 in with an extra ferrule to make it jam and so as to show 

 the rings at the side, while the top, spliced to the middle 

 joint by a piece of stout string, was once an integral part 

 of an eight-foot American bait-casting rod. The top 

 carried its rings on the upper side. Thus, though a line 

 put through the rings pursued a spiral course around the 

 rod from butt to top, though the rod was a flail of flails, 

 the angler had a weapon of some sort in his hands and 

 two hours to use it in; so he put his pride in his pocket 

 and his reel to the reel seat, ran his line through the 

 rings, and returned to the water-side. Just above a long 

 weir-cauld the fishing began, and just over the edge of a 

 broad bank of lilies — those with the pink lanceolate leaves 

 and the exquisite wax-pink flower which come at the end 

 of July — three trout were rising. With painful strain of 

 a damaged wrist, a Red Sedge was got over No. 1, and a 

 trout of one and a quarter pounds was promptly hustled 

 ashore. No. 2 was a somewhat similar fish, and was 

 similarly treated. No. 3 took the same fly, and after 

 several times displaying in the air proportions proclaiming 

 " two pounds," he allowed his chin to be got over the edge 

 of the lilies, and he was being steered to the net when, just 

 as he was in reach of the net, the hook came unstuck, 

 and for a moment he lay on his side on top of the lilies. 

 The lame German gillie made a desperate dig under him 

 with a landing-net, but the mass of foliage and roots was 

 too dense, and he failed. So dense was it that it took 

 Titanic struggles on the part of the fish to worm himself 



