Dighy 
with holes and as ragged as Rip Van Winkle's 
old coat at the end of his twenty years' sleep 
on the mountain. But here is matter for reflec- 
tion. Try your best you cannot find a hole 
in him. He bears a charmed anatomy. He 
must certainly have been constructed with 
special reference to being pitchforked. 
There is a fiction about his getting a scrub- 
bing when he reaches land. This is a treatment 
which, to the observer, he appears to need 
several times before he is finally considered 
" cured." But he gets it only once, one scrub- 
bing, like a plenary indulgence, evidently being 
thought sufficient to wipe away future as well as 
present stains. There are reasons for conjec- 
turing that the scrubbing is sometimes omitted 
altogether, and that he is introduced to his flakes 
with the manifold marks of his captivity upon 
him. 
He rests awhile in the vats of salt into which 
he was finally pitchforked, then Is taken out 
and " press-piled " for a few days. This is not 
as bad as being pitchforked. It is merely 
being piled up, tail in and shoulders out, into 
a round mound by the fish-flakes. These 
mounds of penitent cod are a part of the 
