goods): You'll find it a very
useful thing. Your gut will always be ready to use. Ha! my friend (to
trout rising madly twenty yards out), I rather think you'll make number
four. (Done accordingly. Spring balance produced; trout weighed at 2
lb. 1 oz. in sight of General.)

GENERAL (moving off to the next meadow, and commanding a deep bend, the
haunt of heavy trout); I suppose I have lost the trick; but catch them
I can't. I have risen six fish, and lost the only ones that took me.
Here's the keeper. What are they doing at the ford, Harvey?

HARVEY: The master's got four, General, and he wants you to come down.
The shallow's all alive, and they are taking well. There's a trout,
sir, at the tail of that weed.

GENERAL (casting a loose line): Missed it again, by Jove! Why was
that, Harvey?

HARVEY (coughing slightly): Well, General, if you ask me, I fancy you
had too much slack on the water. You'll have a better chance on the
sharp stream below. Let me carry your rod, sir. (Hitches fly in small
ring.) No wonder, General, the fish got off: the barb's gone from the
hook.

GENERAL (pacing downwards): That's it, is it? Nobody knows better than
I that after a fish balks at the hook, one should examine the point.
Yet I preach without practice. Ah, me! I'm not in it.

R. O. (genially greeting, and wading out of the shallow): Come along,
General; they are rising well, fly and fish both; and this is a bit of
water where they generally mean business. Good luck to you! There's a
grand trout a little higher up, look. He takes every fly that sails
over to him. Pitch your Champion just four inches before his nose, and
he's a gone coon.

GENERAL (encouraged and inspired, casting with confidence; and,
believing that he is going to be successful, succeeding): _You_ are all
right, my spotted enemy (playing the fish down stream firmly). Come
along, Harvey, no quarter; get below those flags, and I'll run him in
before he knows where he is. That's it: two pounds and a half for a
ducat!

R. O.: Capital! We can't send for Georgy's scales, but I bet you he is
two and three-quarters (as the General bangs the head of fish on the
edge of his brogue sole). Georgy's priest would come in convenient
here, too.

SUFFIELD (at upper end of water, kneeling patiently at the edge of an
older coppice, smoking the pipe of perfect peace, and soliloquising):
They don't rise yet. But a time will come. Hang it! but this is
swe