nature.  In a cold sweat, Tam and the boy fled from the waterside and cast themselves shivering into their beds over the byre at home.  But as he lay awake, unable to close an eye, Purdie’s courage crept back to him, and again he resolved that have that fish he would, muckle black de’il or no.  So again he roused his now reluctant torch-bearer, and having with difficulty convinced him that the fish was actually a fish, and not the devil let loose on them for their sin in having broken the Sabbath—­“Irr ye sure, Tam, it wasna the de’il?” the boy quavered—­before daylight they again found the spot where the great kipper lay.  And whether it was that this time, knowing that it really was Monday morning, Purdie threw with easier conscience and consequently with surer aim, or to what other cause who may say, but certain it is that the man and the boy, soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow, triumphantly bore home that morning to the mill, where Purdie’s father then lived, a most monstrous heavy fish.

The leister used in “sunning” or in “burning the water” differed somewhat in shape from the weapon with which Tam Purdie secured his big kipper.  It, too, had five single-barbed prongs, but these were all of equal length, and the wooden handle of this implement was straight, and very much longer than that of the throwing leister; sixteen feet was no unusual length for the handle of the former weapon.

Burning the water, as its name implies, was a sport indulged in at night by torchlight.  Sunning, on the other hand, was the daylight form of “burning,” but it could be practised only when the river was dead low, and then not unless the weather were very calm and bright.  The salmon, as they lay in the clear, sun-lit water, were speared from a boat, and vast numbers were so killed; indeed, the frightened fish had small chance of escape, for spearing began at the pool’s foot, and men with leisters blocked the way of escape up stream.  No doubt into this, as into its kindred sport “burning,” excitement in plenty, and boisterous fun, entered largely; many a man, miscalculating the depth of water in which a fish lay, to the unfeigned delight of his comrades, took a rapid and involuntary header into the icy stream.  But both sports partook too much of the nature of butchery—­carts used to be needed to carry home the spoil—­and they are “weel awa’ if they bide.”  “Bide” they must, though in times not remote one has heard faint whisperings of the burning of the waters in some far-off district of the Border.  Nor are there wanting those who yet openly defend the practice, deeming it indeed no sin, but rather a benefit to the water, to take from it some of the superfluous fish, which, say they, would otherwise almost certainly die of disease and contaminate the stream.