Here follows the story of Bran-Newcome, with whom, in a certain year of rain and wind, I had to do. Read and you shall learn of our little private war, how it began in the early days of May, and how articles of peace were signed on the twenty-eighth of June under the willows on the bank that lies between the Running Ditch and the Slow Water by the road to Great Ottley.
This was in the good old days when I used to catch fishes out of Clere, the bad old days when the angling had no competition, and I used to come rushing down here by a leaden-footed express train each Friday night and go away on Monday morning and fish perpetually in between, the bad old days when there was no harp in the valley—only the fishes and me.
You are to know that the Slow Water is not all mine to fish. From half-way along it down to the island the main stream is forbidden to me. At
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