me. Presently: "So ends another merry Midsummer Day," he observed, and I heard a faint sigh follow the words. "It has brought me right good sport whose memory shall sweeten all my long year." Evidently he got a day on the water each season. I tried to be glad that he had done well—I said I was; but my voice was not convincing. He detected its false ring instantly. "And you, good master," he said, "have catched, I doubt not, an honest store of fishes?" I said, not too amiably (or too truthfully—but who can blame me?) that I had risen several big trout, but had grassed nothing all day. This latter statement the condition of my creel made necessary. He was just the sort of complacent old creature who would not be satisfied with verbal evidence. "Tush, tush!" he observed, "what make of angler is this?" I considered whether I might, without all loss of self-respect, take this venomous ancient by his admirable middle and heave him into the river. I decided that at all costs I must keep my hands off him. I owed my fishing to a churchman, and the clergy hang together.
I busied myself with casting above some particularly oily rings. "And yet," he remarked critically to the sunset, "he throweth deftly and far. But why kneeleth he?"
I rose abruptly and went fifty yards up stream.
