Dusk found me on the point of land which lay between the end of a mill-tail and the main river. A snipe was bleating about in a neighbouring meadow. There was a primrose sky above one down, a young moon above the other. A water-rat emerged from shadow and took its slanting course across the river, bent on some petty business or other. Idly I cast my line (by this time I was fishing a sedge, wet, down-stream) athwart its course, to see the furry thing dive, always a charming spectacle. It dived. I had hooked a water-rat.
A man approached on the other side of the mill-tail, and, thinking that I had a fish, congratulated me on my fortune. I perceived that he was Slattery. About the same time I drew a highly incensed water-rat on to the gravel at my feet. He was hooked lightly in the extreme point of the tail. As I lovingly unfastened the hook he turned, and with hideous ingratitude bit me to the bone of the first finger of my left hand. Then he rushed into the river. I uttered a loud cry. Slattery, supposing I had lost my fish, cried, "Hard lines!" I said, "It's bitten me." "Bitten you?" he repeated. "Bitten you, did you say?" It occurred to me that I had not told him what I had been catching. If he believed it to have
