“I ought to have you now,” he said, “though nobody knows what a rogue you are; and a pretty dance you have led me!”

Doubting the strength of his tackle to lift even the dead weight of the fish, and much more to meet his despairing rally, he happily saw a little shallow gut, or back-water, where a small spring ran out.  Into this by a dexterous turn he rather led than pulled the fish, who was ready to rest for a minute or two; then he stuck his rod into the bank, ran down stream, and with his hat in both hands appeared at the only exit from the gut.  It was all up now with the monarch of the brook.  As he skipped and jumped, with his rich yellow belly, and chaste silver sides, in the green of the grass, joy and glory of the highest merit, and gratitude, glowed in the heart of Lorraine.  “Two and three quarters you must weigh.  And at your very best you are!  How small your head is!  And how bright your spots are!” he cried, as he gave him the stroke of grace.  “You really have been a brave and fine fellow.  I hope they will know how to fry you.”

While he cut his fly out of this grand trout’s mouth, he felt for the first time a pain in his knee, where the point of the stake had entered it.  Under the buckle of his breeches blood was soaking away inside his gaiters; and then he saw how he had dyed the water.  After washing the wound and binding it with dock-leaves and a handkerchief, he followed the stream through a few more meadows, for the fish began to sport pretty well as the gloom of the evening deepened; so that by the time the gables of the old farm-house appeared, by the light of a young moon, and the comet, Lorraine had a dozen more trout in his basket, silvery-sided and handsome fellows, though none of them over a pound perhaps, except his first and redoubtable captive.

A DANE IN THE DIKE

From ‘Mary Anerley’

Now, whether spy-glass had been used by any watchful mariner, or whether only blind chance willed it, sure it is that one fine morning Mary met with somebody.  And this was the more remarkable, when people came to think of it, because it was only the night before that her mother had almost said as much.

“Ye munna gaw doon to t’ sea be yersell,” Mistress Anerley said to her daughter:  “happen ye mought be one too many.”

Master Anerley’s wife had been at “boarding-school,” as far south as Suffolk, and could speak the very best of southern English (like her daughter Mary) upon polite occasion.  But family cares and farm-house life had partly cured her of her education, and from troubles of distant speech she had returned to the ease of her native dialect.

“And if I go not to the sea by myself,” asked Mary, with natural logic, “why, who is there now to go with me?” She was thinking of her sadly missed comrade, Jack.

“Happen some day, perhaps, one too many.”

The maiden was almost too innocent to blush; but her father took her part as usual.