must needs get exceeding wet; moreover, it was close time.  There was no shadow of excuse.  But he was a boy again; fifty years had slipped off his shoulders.  And I know not what came of the salmon, but it left the water; nor do I know what the watcher said who came over the hill inopportunely.  Maybe the trouser-pocket where the old gentleman kept his silver was a good deal lighter, and that of the watcher a good deal heavier, when the twain parted.  And therein the old gentleman sinned doubly; for himself he broke the law, and he put temptation in the way of the watcher, and caused him also to sin and to be guilty of grave dereliction of duty.  Yet there it was!  The most rigid of his kind in pursuit of virtue and in observance of the law, saw “a fish”—­and straightway, irresistibly the old Adam moved within him.  Nay!  Under certain circumstances hardly would one trust even a black-coated Border minister if a salmon provoked him too sorely.

In former days, many were the ways whereby a fish might be induced to quit his native element.  Now, it is different; though even now possibly his end might not in every case endure too close scrutiny.  But in the days when our grandsires and great-grandsires were young, salmon were regarded as of small value; they sold possibly at 2d. the pound, and servants in Tweedside homes were wont to bargain that they should not be forced to eat salmon every day of the week.  Then, practically no method of capture was illegal; you might take him almost when, where, and how you pleased.  Indeed, one reads that at St. Boswells in 1794 the neighbourhood was “seldom at a loss for a small salmon, which proves a great conveniency to families.”  It was not as if such a thing as a close season had never been known.  Five hundred years before the date above mentioned there were laws in existence regulating the capture of salmon, and in the reign of James I of Scotland the law was most stringent.  In 1424 it was enacted that “Quha sa ever be convict of Slauchter of Salmonde in tyme forbidden be the Law, he shall pay fourtie shillings for the unlaw, and at the third tyme gif he be convict of sik Trespasse he shall tyne his life.”  But the law had fallen into disuse—­was, in fact, a dead letter; practically there was no “tyme forbidden,” or at least the close season was as much honoured in the breach as in the observance, and, especially in the upper waters of Tweed and her tributaries, countless numbers of spawning fish were annually destroyed.

But as the salmon fisheries of Great Britain grew in value, so were various destructive methods of capturing the fish declared to be illegal, and many a practice that in earlier days was regarded as “sport” may now be indulged in not at all.  Some of those practices were picturesque enough in themselves, and brimmed over with excitement and incident; indeed, as portrayed in the pages of Guy Mannering, they were, to use Sir Walter’s own words, “inexpressibly animating.”  Such, for instance, were “burning the water” and “sunning.”  Others, such as rake-hooking, cross-lining, and decking salmon out of shallow water, were mere poaching devices with little redeeming virtue, commending themselves to nobody, except as a means of filling the pot.