The trout, paralysed with astonishment, followed obediently, wriggled itself bodily over the weeds and through the rushes, swung in the deep safe water for a second, and made off up stream like lightning. But he was well hooked, and there was never any cause for alarm. MacArthur reeled him in, let him run, reeled him in again, and after the usual fuss and bungling with the net, I got him to land—2¼ lb. MacArthur was dumb with delight. When I had recovered the power of speech, I said, "You now see how easy dry-fly fishing really is. Any man who can cast as you do may fish a chalk-stream with every prospect of success." I advised him to go up the river and practise on his own account. "All you have to do," I said, "is to avoid drag and pull in your slack, and forget that you ever thought there was anything difficult about this game."
The really remarkable feature of this story is that at the end of the day MacArthur admitted that the capture of his first trout was a fluke, whereas it was not. It was the masterly cast that did it. MacArthur, though he had never fished a chalk-stream, knew more about casting than nine dry-fly anglers out of ten that you will meet in conversation. But, though he brought back two other fishes, he had acquired a respect—a quite proper respect—for the many which he
