that the old
prejudice against "cold water" still lingers amongst the country folk of
Gloucestershire; so that this story must always be taken _cum
grano salis_.

* * * * *

There are few trout streams to our mind more delightful from the
angler's point of view than the Gloucestershire Coln. Rising a few miles
from Cheltenham, it runs into the Thames near Lechlade, and affords some
fifteen miles or more of excellent fishing. The scenery is of that quiet
and homely type that belongs so exclusively to the chalk and limestone
streams of the south of England.

From its source to the point at which it joins the Isis, the Coln flows
continuously through a series of parks and small well-wooded demesnes,
varied with picturesque Cotswold villages and rich water meadows. It
swells out into fishable proportions just above Lord Eldon's Stowell
property, steals gently past his beautiful woods at Chedworth and the
Roman villa discovered a few years ago, then onward through the quaint
old-world villages of Fossbridge to Winson and Coln-St-Dennis. Though
not a hundred miles from London, this part of Gloucestershire is one of
the most primitive and old-fashioned districts in England. Until the new
railway between Andover and Cheltenham was opened, four years ago, with
a small station at Fosscross, there were many inhabitants of these
old-world villages who had never seen a train or a railway. Only the
other day, on asking a good lady, the wife of a farmer, whether she had
ever been in London, I received the reply, "No, but I've been to
Cheltenham." This in a tone of voice that meant me to understand that
going to Cheltenham, a distance of about sixteen miles, was quite as
important an episode in her life as a visit to London would have been.

On leaving Winson the Coln widens out considerably, and for the next two
miles becomes the boundary between Mr. Wykeham-Musgrave's property of
Barnsley and the manor of Ablington. It flows through the picturesque
hamlet of Ablington, within a hundred yards of the old Elizabethan manor
house, over an artificial fall in the garden, and passes onward on its
secluded way through lovely woodland scenery, until it reaches the
village of Bibury; here it runs for nearly half a mile parallel with the
main street of the village, and then enters the grounds of Bibury Court.
I know no prettier village in England than Bibury, and no snugger
hostelry than the Swan. The landlad