without any shilly-shally before nine o'clock. It was along iron-bound
roads, with the meltings of yesterday converted to ice, that I drove to
my allotted beat. There was a wonderful change from yesterday; the
golden plover on the flats were not briskly moving on the moistening
turf as before, though flocks of woodpigeons were astir. The pure
snow, which remained on the low land, was crisp and sparkling,
diamonding a fair white world. The river had fallen, of course, since
the snow of yesterday had made no difference. The evidence was plain
enough. You read it in the green margin glistening against the snow
line sinuously left along the banks. Tay looked beautifully black,
moreover, and the boatmen said "They ought to come." But I never knew
salmon take properly till a frosty day has well advanced. On this
bright day I resolved to try to write up my notes, in the fervent hope
that every good sentence would be spoiled by a summons from one of the
four rods of which I was in command. For one hour my pencil wrought
without a pause, and delightful it was under the sunshine to indite to
the steady strokes of two pair of oars, the rhythmic swish of the
water, now tranquilly flowing, and easy for all of us.

Fortunately our most unlikely water came first, and all the while the
frost would be getting out of the water. It was a very heavy reach,
and Tay was still too big for such; fish would be lying lower down, and
those that we were rowing over would not take well. Those five lovely
springers that I mentioned before must have come out of a particularly
favourable stretch. That is part of the glorious uncertainty of it
all. The boat of to-day, for example, accounted yesterday for one
solitary kelt, though it had shared our experience of futile pulls and
visible rises in the afternoon. Now if---- Ah! The shrill tongue of
Tom Thumb's reel gave a welcome view holloa (half-past eleven) and the
sentence I was pencilling remains unfinished. I have forgotten what it
would have been. By this time the motions of a kelt had become
familiar, and I liked not the docility with which this fellow allowed
himself to be towed to land, nor his inertness when I had him in grip
afterwards. My verdict I gave in a look at the headman, and his
confirmation of my unspoken thought was, "Yes; he's too quiet." Yet it
was a long while before I could get him up sufficiently for recognition
beyond doubt; that accomplished, it was short