Two Big Pike. 83 



only two deliveries a day, at eight o'clock in 

 the morning and four in the afternoon, he had 

 plenty of spare time to exercise his favourite 

 amusement of fishing. He was a tall, spare, 

 upright, keen-looking man, bordering on sixty 

 years of age, and as silent as the grave ; when he 

 did speak, it was usually in a sup pressed tone of 

 voice, a little above a whisper, as if he was afraid 

 even at that distance he might alarm the lish, 

 so much had it become his habit to use excess- 

 ive caution when dealing with the finny tribe. 

 Robert had two very desirable qualifications 

 for a fisherman — patience and perseverance. 



Robert, although very fond of the rod, par- 

 ticularly delighted in set hooks and trimmers, 

 as he said, and truly too, they took all the 

 big fish, but it has a semi-poaching cut 

 about it to be exactly according to my taste ; 

 but with such a fresh-water shark as the 

 pike, I am not very particular as to how I kill 

 him. I noticed that Robert had put rather a 

 bulky-looking flask basket into the trap, and 

 though I knew pretty well what it contained, 

 I asked him what he had got there ? " Only 

 a few trimmers," said Robert. "I thought 

 perhaps if we did not get on well with the rods. 



