It was dark before we splashed through the ford of Borthwick Water, and
dined, and wrote to Mr. Anderson of Princes Street, Edinburgh, for a
supply of Bloody Doctors. But we never had a chance to try them. I have
since fished Clearburn from a boat, but it was not a day of rising fish,
and no big ones came to the landing-net. There are plenty in the loch,
but you need not make the weary journey; they are not for you nor me.
THE LADY OR THE SALMON?
The circumstances which attended and caused the death of the Hon.
Houghton Grannom have not long been known to me, and it is only now that,
by the decease of his father, Lord Whitchurch, and the extinction of his
noble family, I am permitted to divulge the facts. That the true tale of
my unhappy friend will touch different chords in different breasts, I am
well aware. The sportsman, I think, will hesitate to approve him; the
fair, I hope, will absolve. Who are we, to scrutinise human motives, and
to award our blame to actions which, perhaps, might have been our own,
had opportunity beset and temptation beguiled us? There is a certain
point at which the keenest sense of honour, the most chivalrous affection
and devotion, cannot bear the strain, but break like a salmon line under
a masterful stress. That my friend succumbed, I admit; that he was his
own judge, the severest, and passed and executed sentence on himself, I
have now to show.
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