gacy, to stay near town till affairs were wound up. They told me,
with a view to reconcile me perhaps, of a trout stream with a decent inn
near it; an unknown stream in Kent. It seems a junior member of the firm
is an angler, at least he sometimes catches pike or perch in the Medway
some way from the stream where the trout rise in audacious security from
artificial lures. I stipulated for a clerk to come down with any papers
to be signed, and started at once for Victoria. I decline to tell the
name of my find, firstly because the trout are the gamest little fish
that ever rose to fly and run to a good two pounds. Secondly, I have
paid for all the rooms in the inn for the next year, and I want it to
myself. The glove is lying on the table next me as I write. If it isn't
in my breast-pocket or under my pillow, it is in some place where I can
see it. It has a delicate grey body (suede, I think they call it) with a
whipping of silver round the top, and a darker grey silk tag to fasten
it. It is marked 5-3/4 inside, and has a delicious scent about it, to
keep off moths, I suppose; naphthaline is better. It reminds me of a
'silver-sedge' tied on a ten hook. I startled the good landlady of the
little inn (there is no village fortunately) when I arrived with the
only porter of the tiny station laden with traps. She hesitated about a
private sitting-room, but eventually we compromised matters, as I was
willing to share it with the other visitor. I got into knickerbockers at
once, collared a boy to get me worms and minnow for the morrow, and as I
felt too lazy to unpack tackle, just sat in the shiny armchair (made
comfortable by the successive sitting of former occupants) at the open
window and looked out. The river, not the trout stream, winds to the
right, and the trees cast trembling shadows into its clear depths. The
red tiles of a farm roof show between the beeches, and break the
monotony of blue sky background. A dusty waggoner is slaking his thirst
with a tankard of ale. I am conscious of the strange lonely feeling that
a visit to England always gives me. Away in strange lands, even in
solitary places, one doesn't feel it somehow. One is filled with the
hunter's lust, bent on a 'kill', but at home in the quiet country, with
the smoke curling up from some fireside, the mowers busy laying the hay
in swaths, the children tumbling under the trees in the orchards, and a
girl singing as she spreads the clothes on the sweetbriar hed