th salmon roe, an illegal lure. On Thursday the red tinge had
died out of the water, but only a very strong wader would have ventured
in; others had a good chance, if they tried it, of being picked up at
Berwick. Friday was the luckless day of my own failure and broken heart.
The water was still very heavy and turbid, a frantic wind was lashing the
woods, heaps of dead leaves floated down, and several sheaves of corn
were drifted on the current. The long boat-pool at Yair, however, is
sheltered by wooded banks, and it was possible enough to cast, in spite
of the wind's fury. We had driven from a place about five miles distant,
and we had not driven three hundred yards before I remembered that we had
forgotten the landing-net. But, as I expected nothing, it did not seem
worth while to go back for this indispensable implement. We reached the
waterside, and found that the trout were feeding below the pendent
branches of the trees and in the quiet, deep eddies of the long
boat-pool. One cannot see rising trout without casting over them, in
preference to labouring after salmon, so I put up a small rod and
diverted myself from the bank. It was to little purpose. Tweed trout
are now grown very shy and capricious; even a dry fly failed to do any
execution worth mentioning. Conscience compelled me, as I had been sent
out by kind hosts to fish for salmon, not to neglect my orders. The
armour--the ponderous gear of the fisher--was put on with the enormous
boots, and the gigantic rod was equipped. Then came the beginning of
sorrows. We had left the books of salmon flies comfortably reposing at
home. We had also forgotten the whiskey flask. Everything, in fact,
except cigarettes, had been left behind. Unluckily, not quite
everything: I had a trout fly-book, and therein lay just one large salmon
fly, not a Tweed fly, but a lure that is used on the beautiful and
hopeless waters of the distant Ken, in Galloway. It had brown wings, a
dark body, and a piece of jungle-cock feather, and it was fastened to a
sea-trout casting-line. Now, if I had possessed no salmon flies at all,
I must either have sent back for some, or gone on innocently dallying
with trout. But this one wretched fly lured me to my ruin. I saw that
the casting-line had a link which seemed rather twisted. I tried it;
but, in the spirit of Don Quixote with his helmet, I did not try it hard.
I waded into the easiest-looking part of the pool, just above a hug