ys gives him as neatly
a "cocked" fly as is possible.

"_Must_ have him! Bang over him!" exclaims Tom Peregrine excitedly.

But there is no response from the fish.

"Keep _terrifying_ of him, keep _terrifying_ of him," whispers Tom;
"he's bound to make a mistake sooner or later." So we try again, and at
the same moment that the fly floats down over the monster's nose he
moves a foot to the right and takes a live may-fly with a big roll and
a flop.

"Well, I never! Try him with a may-fly, sir," says Peregrine.

Thinking this advice sound, we hastily put on the first may-fly of the
season; and no sooner have we made our cast than, as Rudyard Kipling
once said to the writer, there is a boil in the water "like the launch
of a young yacht," a tremendous swirl, and we are fast into a famous
trout. Directly he feels the insulting sting of the hook he rushes down
stream at a terrific rate, so that the line, instead of being taut,
dangles loosely on the water. We gather the line through the rings in
breathless haste--there is no time to reel up--and once more get a tight
strain on him. Fortunately there are no weeds here; the current is too
rapid for them. Twice he jumps clean out of the water, his broad,
silvery sides flashing in the sunlight. At length, after a five minutes'
fight, during which our companion never stops talking, we land the best
fish we have caught for four years. Nearly three pounds, he is as "fat
as butter," as bright as a new shilling, with the pinkest of pink spots
along his sides, and his broad back is mottled green. The head is small,
indicating that he is not a "cannibal," but a real, good-conditioned,
pink-fleshed trout. And it is rare in May to catch a big fish that has
grown into condition.

We have now four trout in the basket. "A pretty dish of fish," as
Peregrine ejaculates several times as we walk up stream towards the
washpool. For thirty years he has been about this water, and has seen
thousands of fish caught, yet he is as keen to-day as a boy with his
first trout. As we pass through a wood we question him as to a small
stone hut, which appeared to have fallen out of repair.

"Oh!" he replied, "that was built in the time of the Romans"; and then
he went on to tell us how a _great_ battle was fought in the wood, and
how, about twenty years ago, they had found "a _great_ skeleton of a
man, nearly seven feet long"--a sure proof, he added, that the Romans
had fought here.

As a matter of