THE BLOODY DOCTOR 95 



this true sportsman. He loves better to hear the 

 lark sing than the mouse cheep ; he wanders from 

 depopulated stream to depopulated burn, and all 

 is fish that comes to his fly. Fingerlings he keeps, 

 and does not return to the water ' as pitying their 

 youth.' Let us not grudge him his sport as long 

 as he fishes fair, and he is always good compan)-. 

 But he, with all the other countless fishermen, 

 make fish so rare and so wary that, except after 

 a flood in Meggat or the Douglas burn, trout are 

 scarce to be taken by ordinary skill. As for 



Thae reiving cheils 

 Frae Galashiels, 



who use nets, and salmon roe, and poisons, and 

 dynamite, they are miscreants indeed ; they spoil 

 the sport, not of the rich, but of their own 

 class, and of every man who would be quiet, 

 and go angling in the sacred streams of Chris- 

 topher North and the Shepherd. The mills, with 

 their dyes and dirt, are also responsible for 

 the dearth of trout. 



Untainted yet thy stream, fair Teviot, runs, 



