he must have foul-hooked a moderate-sized
fish. Darkness was fast coming on, and at last the Colonel told his
attendant to wade in and try to net the fish.

"He's that muckle I cannot get him in, sir," cried the lad after a time.

But the Colonel could not wait.

"Nonsense," he said. "Get his head in. I can't stop here all night."

Then came the not uncommon result of trying to net a big fish in an
uncertain light; the rim of the net fouled the gut cast, and away went
the fish. It would spoil the story not to tell the rest of it in Sir
Herbert Maxwell's own words.

"The Colonel did not realise the magnitude of his disaster until two or
three weeks later, when he happened to be waiting for a train at St.
Boswells Station. The porter came to him and said:

"'Hae ye ony mind, Colonel, o' yon big fush ye slippit in the Tod Holes
yon nicht?'

"'Oh, I mind him well,' replied the Colonel; 'a good lump of a fish he
was, I believe, but I never saw him rightly.'

"'Ay,' said the other dryly; 'yon wad be the biggest sawmon that ever
cam oot o' the water o' Tweed, I'm thinking.'

"'Why, what do you know about him?' asked the Colonel.

"'Oh, I ken fine aboot the ae half o' him, ony way,' replied the porter.
'Ye see, there was twa lads clappit amang the trees below the Wallace
statue forenenst ye, waiting till it was dark to set a cairn net, ye
ken. Weel, didna they see you coming doun the water taigled wi' a fish?
And when ye cam to the Tod Holes, they saw ye loss him, and they got a
visee o' the water he made coming into the east bank, ye ken. There's a
wee bit cairn there, ye ken, wi' a piece lound water ahint it, where
they jaloused the fish wad rest himsel a wee. Weel, they waited till it
was mirk night, and then they jist whuppit the net round him, and they
sune had him oot. He was that big he wadna gang into the bag they had
wi' them; so they cuttit him in twa halves; and the tae half they brocht
to the station here to gang by rail to Embro'. Weel, if the tither half
was as big, yon fish bud to be seeventy pund weight; for the half o' him
I weighed mysel, and it was better nor thirty-five pund. Ay, a gran'
kipper!'"

Yet occasionally, in olden days, a salmon big as Tam Purdie's muckle
kipper was got by rod and line. In 1815 Rob Kerss, the famous "Rob o'
the Trows," hooked a leviathan in Makerstoun Water--the biggest fish, he
said, that ever he saw; so big that it took even so great a master as
Rob hours to land,