34 ANGLING SKETCHES 



and more easily beguiled. A week on Test would I 

 gladly give for one day of boyhood beside the Aill, 

 where the casting was not scientific, but where the 

 fish rose gamely at almost any fly. Nobody 

 seemed to go there then, and, I fancy, nobody 

 need go there now. The nets and other dismal 

 devices of the poachers from the towns have ruined 

 that pleasant brook, where one has passed so many 

 a happy hour, walking the long way home wet and 

 weary, but well content. Into Aill flows a burn, 

 the Headshaw burn, where there used to be good 

 fish, because it runs, out of Headshaw Loch, a weed- 

 fringed lonely tarn on the bleak level of the table- 

 land. Bleak as it may seem, Headshaw Loch has 

 the great charm of absolute solitude : there are no 

 tourists nor anglers here, and the life of the birds 

 is especially free and charming. The trout, too, are 

 large, pink of flesh, and game of character ; but the 

 world of mankind need not rush thither. They 

 are not to be captured by the wiles of men, or so 

 rarely that the most enthusiastic anglers have 

 given them up. They are as safe in their tarn as 

 those enchanted fish of the ' Arabian Nights.' 



