the big lake by the time they reached the butcher's; it
contained fish of wonderful size--monsters, which always lay snugly at
the bottom of deep holes beneath overhanging trees--such profoundly deep
holes! and when, by a wonderful chance, one of these enormous fellows
was hooked, down he went to the bottom and struck his tail into the mud,
so that it was impossible to draw him out, and then of course the line
broke.

"Ah," Harry said, "there were wonderful fish in that great clear-watered
lake, with its bright gurgling stream, that came dashing down from the
hills, and entered one end to leave it at the other in a cascade, that
went plashing down the mossy stones, and along in a chain of streamlets
and pools through the dark recesses of the wood, till it joined the
river half a mile below. There never could have been such beautiful
golden-scaled carp anywhere else, nor such finely-marked perch; while,
as for eels, they were enormous. The pike, too, were said to be so
large and so tame, that they would come to the side to be fed, and
therefore would have been easy to capture; but his lordship forbade any
one pike-fishing in his lake, this being a luxury he retained for
himself, except on special occasions, when he invited a friend to join
him."

By listening to such a glowing account of the place, Fred's mind grew so
excited that he would have liked to have started at once for the lake,
and feasted his eyes upon the wonders; but the butcher's was now
reached, and the fat dame in the shop having been told of the cause of
their visit, "Willum," the boy, was called, who armed himself with a
skewer, and then took the lads to a vile-smelling shed, where lay a heap
of sheepskins and a bullock's hide, and from the insides of these, and,
by poking out from amongst tendons of an old shin bone, the little tin
box was soon filled with the great, fat, white maggots, the end of whose
life, the beginning, and the middle, and all the rest of it, seemed to
be to keep continually in motion with one incessant wriggle. The boy
was recompensed with twopence, which he acknowledged by a tug at his
greasy hair with his dirty fingers; and then a visit was paid to the
shop, where Harry bought a sixpenny ball of twine, and three sheets of
white and blue tea paper for some particular purpose, which Philip
seemed to be alive to, but which they would not reveal to their cousin
until they returned home.

Only one more visit had to be paid, and