144 MELTON AND HOMESPUN 



crofter or gillie I'd be the noo, wi' never a bawbee put 

 awa' for a rainy day," said Mac, as he punched the sleek 

 and well-fed quarters of a remarkably good-looking and 

 docile Angus bull, which he had imported from his 

 native country for stock purposes. 



Having lent the farmer a hand in unhitching and 

 racking down the horses, I was duly presented to Mrs. 

 Mac, a somewhat angular but pleasant-looking Scots- 

 woman, who greeted me in a most hospitable manner, 

 and then commenced to ask all sorts of questions about 

 the auld country. 



It was during the progress of a remarkably substantial 

 meal that I noticed a rather antiquated, but apparently 

 serviceable, spliced fly-rod standing in the corner of the 

 kitchen which — barring high days and holidays, when 

 a state apartment was opened — formed both sitting- 

 room and refectory. 



Now, to say that the farmer's home-tied flies were 

 rough would be putting it very mildly; they were the 

 most wonderful and fearful specimens of the tacklist's 

 art imaginable. Fashioned from the very coarsest of 

 coarse gut and of a size generally used for sea-trout 

 fishing, the wings and hackles of these fearsome lures 

 consisted, for the most part, of the plumage of the common 

 or garden barn-door hen ; here and there was the feather 

 of a guinea-fowl, or the bronze back-plumage of a turkey 

 being used by way of variety. 



" They're a wee bit uncanny-lookin', but they will 

 kill fush, and that's the main thing," declared Mac, as 

 I surveyed the very artificial flies, which, for order's 

 sake, had been placed in a cheese-box sufficiently capacious 



