126 THE TROUT ARE RISING 
service. He is still an Important Person. Also, 
of course, he never loses the capacity of inspiring 
awe in wrong-doers, or the reputation for being 
“a man of his hands” which come to wearers of 
the blue. All that counts a good deal in 
keepering. 
The roving days fitfully described in this 
book gave me opportunities of studying the water- 
bailiff and the keeper in various districts, When 
the president of a medical board at a military 
hospital near Portsmouth early last year said 
spontaneously and suddenly ::“ Do you like trout 
fishing ?”’ the question thrilled me with antici- 
pation. “ Yes, sir!” I replied with the promptness 
of a good conscience. After service abroad in a 
climate so warm that the partition between it and 
a climate still warmer (““H.E. 2 sticks,” the 
Major calls it) is, so the irreverent ones say, only 
a cigarette paper, it appeared that the best medicine 
was “open air and pottering about with a rod by 
a trout stream.’ So it proved on two months’ 
sick leave, in Devon and Cornwall. Then when 
demobilization came in due course, and strength 
came with it, pottering about was promoted to 
active, regular fishing. 
Wherever chance took me, there was the 
water-bailiff sooner or later to be found. Now, 
the peripatetic fisherman, wherever he goes—in 
England, at any rate—must take out a fishing 
licence if the river concerned comes under the 
control of a Board of Conservators. In addition, 
if the water or any part of it may be fished by 
