Now Nature is all very well. I have nothing to say against her of a
Sunday, or when trout are not rising. But she was no comfort to me now.
Smiling she gazed on my discomfiture. The lovely lines of the hills,
curving about the loch, and with their deepest dip just opposite where I
sat, were all of a golden autumn brown, except in the violet distance.
The grass of Parnassus grew thick and white around me, with its moonlight
tint of green in the veins. On a hillside by a brook the countryfolk
were winning their hay, and their voices reached me softly from far off.
On the loch the marsh-fowl flashed and dipped, the wild ducks played and
dived and rose; first circling high and higher, then, marshalled in the
shape of a V, they made for Alemoor. A solitary heron came quite near
me, and tried his chance with the fish, but I think he had no luck. All
this is pleasant to remember, and I made rude sketches in the fly-leaves
of a copy of Hogg's poems, where I kept my flies. But what joy was there
in this while the "take" grew fainter and ceased at least near the shore?
Out in the middle, where few flies managed to float, the trout were at it
till dark. But near shore there was just one trout who never stopped
gorging all day. He lived exactly opposite the nick in the distant
hills, and exactly a yard farther out than I could throw a fly.
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