Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

MR. JACKSON'S BIG TROUT. 390
might have the window open; and next, whether Lord Hainault
would lend him an opera-glass?
Both were answered in the affirmative. The window was
opened, and Lord Hainault and William came in, bearing, not an
opera-glass, but a great brass telescope, on a stand,- a thing
with an eight-inch object-glass, which had belonged to old Lord
Hainault, who was a Cambridge man, and given to such vanities.
This was very delightful. He could turn it, with a move of
his hand, on to anrt part of the weirs, and see almost every snail
which crawled on the burdocks. The very first day he saw one
of the men from the paper-mill come to the fourth weir, and pull
up the paddles to ease the water. The man looked stealthily
round, and then raised a wheel from below the apron, full of
spawning perch. And this was close time. Oho!
Then, a few days after, came a tall, gray-headed gentleman,
spinning a bleak for trout, who had with him a lad in top-boots,
with a landing-net. And this gentleman sent his bait flying out
here and there across the water, and rattled his line rapidly into
the palm of his hand in a ball, like a consummate master, as he
was. (King among fishermen, prince among gentlemen, you will
read these lines, and you will be so good as to understand that I
am talking of you.) And this gentleman spun all day and
caught nothing.
But he came the next day to the same place, and spun again.
The great full southwesterly wind was roaring up the valley,
singing among the budding trees, and carrying the dark, low,
rainless clouds swiftly before it. At two, just as Lady Ascot and
William had gone to lunch, and after Charles had taken his soup
and a glass of wine; he, lying there, and watching this gentleman diligently, saw his rod bend and his line tighten. The lad
in the top-boots and the landing-net leaped up from where he
lay; there was no doubt about it now. The old gentleman had
got hold of a fish, and a big one.
The next twenty minutes were terrible. The old gentleman
gave him the but, and moved slowly down along the camp-shuting,
and Charles followed him with the telescope, although his hand
was shaking with excitement. After a time, the old gentleman
began to wind up his reel, and then the lad, top-boots, and landingnet, and all, slipped over tile camp-shooting (will anybody tell me
how to spell that word? Campsheading won't do, my dear sir, all
things considered), and lifted the fish (he was nine pounds), up
among the burdocks at the old gentleman's feet.
Charles had the whole group in the telescope, - the old gentleman, the great trout, and the dripping lad, taking off his boots
and emptying the water out of them. But the old gentleman was
looking to his right at somebody who was coming; and immediately there came into the field of the telescope a tall man in a