92 AMID THE HIGH HILLS 
fortune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with equal 
thanks." Yet, as one of the keenest fishermen 
and gillies I have ever known, and who has now 
gone to his long home, used to say, " It's easy 
talking and no easy doing." 
A few days later my host added still more to 
my indebtedness to him by giving one of my 
daughters, who had never killed a salmon, though 
a very successful angler for big trout, the chance 
of trying the river. 
On her first and second days she drew a blank, 
but on the third day killed three fish weighing 
20 lb., 19 lb., and 15 lb., all on the same fly, 
a silver doctor. Who says there is nothing in 
luck ? The day I killed my big fish was the third 
day in the third week of the third month of the 
fishing season ; he was the third fish killed on 
that day, and I hooked him at my third cast. My 
daughter killed her three fish on the third day she 
was fishing. Well might Falstaff {Merry Wives 
of Windsor y Act V., Sc. 1) say : " This is the third 
time — I hope luck lies in odd numbers." My 
daughter's performance was far more satisfactory 
in every way than mine, for fishing with the fly is, 
of course, incomparably superior to fishing with 
the minnow — at least, nearly every angler I have 
