being towed gently into some little harbour among the tall slim water-
grasses, or into a pebbly cove, or up to a green bank; when the
bitterness of struggle is past, and he seems resigned and almost happy;
when at this crisis the clumsy gilly with the gaff scratches him, rouses
him to a last exertion, and entangles the line, so that the salmon breaks
free--that is an experience to which language cannot do justice. The
ancient painter drew his veil over the face of Agamemnon present at his
daughter's sacrifice. Silence and sympathy are all one can offer to the
angler who has toiled all day, and in this wise caught nothing. There is
yet another very bitter sorrow. It is a hard thing for a man to leave
town and hurry to a river in the west, a river that perhaps he has known
since he fished for minnows with a bent pin in happy childhood. The west
is not a dry land; effeminate tourists complain that the rain it raineth
every day. But the heavy soft rain is the very life of an angler. It
keeps the stream of that clear brown hue, between porter and amber, which
he loves; and it encourages the salmon to keep rushing from the estuary
and the sea right up to the mountain loch, where they rest. But suppose
there is a dry summer--and such things have been even in Argyleshire. The
heart of the tourist is glad within him, but as the river shrinks and
shrinks, a silver thread among slimy green mosses in the streams, a sheet
of clear water in the pools, the angler repines. Day after sultry day
goes by, and there is no hope. There is a cloud on the distant hill; it
is only the smoke from some moor that has caught fire. The river grows
so transparent that it is easy to watch the lazy fish sulking at the
bottom. Then comes a terrible temptation. Men, men calling themselves
sportsmen, have been known to fish in the innocent dewy morning, with
worm, with black lob worm. Worse remains behind. Persons of ungoverned
passions, maddened by the sight of the fish, are believed to have poached
with rake-hooks, a cruel apparatus made of three hooks fastened back to
back and loaded with lead. These are thrown over the fish, and then