s upon his
luscious dissipation, few would have the heart to oust him, such a gem
from such a setting. All his back is emerald sparkles all his front red
Indian gold, and here and there he grows white spots to save the eye
from aching. Pike put his finger in and fetched him out, and offered him
a little change of joys, by putting a Limerick hook-through his thorax,
and bringing it out between his elytra. _Cetonia aurata_ liked it
not, but pawed the air very naturally, and fluttered with his wings
attractively.

"I meant to have tried with a fern-web," said the angler; "until I saw
one of these beggars this morning. If he works like that upon the
water, he will do. It was hopeless to try artificials again. What a
lovely colour the water is! Only three days now to the holidays. I have
run it very close. You be ready, younker."

With these words he stepped upon a branch of the alder, for the tone
of the waters allowed approach, being soft and sublustrous, without
any mud. Also Master Pike's own tone was such as becomes the fisherman,
calm, deliberate, free from nerve, but full of eye and muscle. He
stepped upon the alder bough to get as near as might be to the fish, for
he could not cast this beetle like a fly; it must be dropped gently and
allowed to play. "You may come and look," he said to me; "when the water
is so, they have no eyes in their tails."

The rose-beetle trod upon the water prettily, under a lively vibration,
and he looked quite as happy, and considerably more active, than when he
had been cradled in the anthers of the rose. To the eye of a fish he was
a strong individual, fighting courageously with the current, but sure
to be beaten through lack of fins; and mercy suggested, as well as
appetite, that the proper solution was to gulp him.

"Hooked him in the gullet. He can't get off!" cried John Pike, labouring
to keep his nerves under; "every inch of tackle is as strong as a
bell-pull. Now, if I don't land him, I will never fish again!"

Providence, which had constructed Pike foremost of all things, for lofty
angling-disdainful of worm and even minnow--Providence, I say, at this
adjuration, pronounced that Pike must catch that trout. Not many anglers
are heaven-born; and for one to drop off the hook halfway through his
teens would be infinitely worse than to slay the champion trout. Pike
felt the force of this, and rushing through the rushes, shouted: "I am
sure to have him, Dick! Be ready with my nigh