away, resolved to invite him to my home one day soon and paralyse him with my unsuspected skill.
Two months passed, and I had not known the perfect thrill. But although my duns had been rejected, hope did not die, for the May-fly was coming on. Making a dun is admittedly a niggling job. But a May-fly is a large, robust creature, and its imitation may be attempted with some confidence. It is a thing one can lay hold of and pull about with one's hands. Finesse (or so I thought) is not of the essence of May-fly making. I made a May-fly and went down into Wiltshire, the premonition of the perfect thrill already tingling at my nerve centres. I cast my line towards a magnificent trout and waited for the result. The trout, giving one glance of terror upwards, fled for its life into a thick bunch of weeds, while the surface of the river Clere was broken in every direction by the torpedo rushes of great fish which were copying his discreet example.
I now lost a good deal of my interest in fly-tying. I made up my mind to master it in the winter, when time cannot be wasted. A little later I went to that island in the Arctic Circle where MacAlister and I found out the inner truth of flounder-fishing. Here such fish as the poachers had left to us were innocent of guile. I caught
