g the flies as far as possible toward
the middle, and feeling my way carefully along the bottom with the long
net-handle, while Sandy danced on the bank in an agony of apprehension
lest his Predestinated Opportunity should step into a deep hole and be
drowned. It was a curious fact in natural history that on the lochs with
boats the trout were in the shallow water, but in the boatless lochs
they were away out in the depths. "Juist the total depraivity o'
troots," said Sandy, "an' terrible fateegin'."

Sandy had an aversion to commit himself to definite statements on any
subject not theological. If you asked him how long the morning's tramp
would be, it was "no verra long, juist a bit ayant the hull yonner." And
if, at the end of the seventh mile, you complained that it was much too
far, he would never do more than admit that "it micht be shorter."
If you called him to rejoice over a trout that weighed close upon two
pounds, he allowed that it was "no bad--but there's bigger anes i' the
loch gin we cud but wile them oot." And at lunch-time, when we turned
out a full basket of shining fish on the heather, the most that he would
say, while his eyes snapped with joy and pride, was, "Aweel, we canna
complain, the day."

Then he would gather an armful of dried heather-stems for kindling, and
dig out a few roots and crooked limbs of the long-vanished forest
from the dry, brown, peaty soil, and make our campfire of prehistoric
wood--just for the pleasant, homelike look of the blaze--and sit down
beside it to eat our lunch. Heat is the least of the benefits that man
gets from fire. It is the sign of cheerfulness and good comradeship. I
would not willingly satisfy my hunger, even in a summer nooning, without
a little flame burning on a rustic altar to consecrate and enliven the
feast. When the bread and cheese were finished and the pipes were filled
with Virginia tobacco, Sandy would begin to tell me, very solemnly and
respectfully, about the mistakes I had made in the fishing that day, and
mourn over the fact that the largest fish had not been hooked. There was
a strong strain of pessimism in Sandy, and he enjoyed this part of the
sport immensely.

But he was at his best in the walk home through the lingering twilight,
when the murmur of the sea trembled through the air, and the incense of
burning peat floated up from the cottages, and the stars blossomed one
by one in the pale-green sky. Then Sandy dandered on at his ease dow