Down North and Up Along 
her, and with glowing eyes she — landed a 
smelt. 
The gods play strange pranks with us poor 
mortals, and never did they play a stranger 
than when they converted M. into the most 
inveterate disciple of Izaak Walton through 
the medium of one wretched little salt-water 
smelt. 
In this case, catching the fish had the very 
agreeable sequence of cooking them out of 
doors and eating them. 
Our gypsy dinners cooked at noon by the 
wayside were the one substantial meal of the 
day, breakfast and supper consisting of oat- 
meal porridge, sometimes without milk, and 
toasted bread, sour, as a rule, though if we 
asked for them, we could generally get an egg 
and some salt fish. 
But those midday meals ! the flavour of them, 
with the aroma of the wood-fire clinging about 
the viands, and the hunger that waited upon 
them ! Even to think of them at this late day 
is enough to quicken the appetite. 
Up to this time we had found that the 
canned or smoked meat of our native land 
with the addition of ship biscuit, milk from a 
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