136 
WILD NORWAY. 
all slack again. While reeling-up, the winch once more 
fell off, and this time I put it on the wrong side up, 
thus necessitating its removal and refixing for the third 
time. At length this was accomplished. Every possible 
blunder and bungle had now been committed—the cate¬ 
gory of crime seemed exhausted, and no further idiocy 
remained to perpetrate. I was free to attend to the 
other end of the line, and the complacent fish was still 
there, awaiting our precarious pleasure. Even he 
seemed to realize that a reprieve was hopeless : for, on 
pressure being renewed, he almost at once “ turned it 
up,” coming in quite sweetly to the gaff on the gravel- 
bed below. He weighed 14 lbs. Virtue, after all, may 
lurk beneath a harmless superstition. 
Helge, our gaffer on the upper water, was a first- 
rate performer with the rod, though not even a forty- 
yard cast will avail when no fish lies below. Kristian, 
on the other beat, though a highly picturesque old 
Norseman of seventy-six summers, whose grey locks 
and rugged features had frequently been committed to 
canvas, was no fisherman. Poor old Kristian ! I for¬ 
gave him, though he did get drunk at the pony-fair and 
smashed one of my rods ! We then engaged Rasmus, 
Helge’s brother, and were pleased with the change. 
At odd times we killed on Forde and above the foss, 
29 troutj weighing 24| lbs., the best fish 2-| lbs. The 
record salmon of Forde, killed in May, 1894, weighed 
51 lbs. 
II. Bird-Notes in the Forde Valley. 
For most of what is good in the following obser¬ 
vations, I am indebted to my brother Alfred, whose 
