It happened that this particular day had been selected by the farmer as one on which he might advantageously thrash part of his crop.  Consequently, the water from his mill pond was now making a temporary spate in the little stream, which, in the course of nature, had caused many salmon to run their noses into the burn’s unexplored meanderings.  When the two ladies reached the stream’s bank, they found the stable-lad up to his knees in the water, and a fish, not over silvery, already floundering high and dry, far from its native element; in shallow, broken water, two or three others vainly struggled to gain higher latitudes.

“Oh-h! mother!” cried the daughter excitedly.

And said the elder lady with little hesitation: 

“Get them out, Jim; get them out.  We’ll kipper them.”  Then, after a thoughtful pause:  “I think I’d like to catch one myself.”

So into the water she plunged, and the three—­the lady and her daughter and the stable-boy—­were so busily and excitedly plowtering in the burn, engaged in this most nefarious and illegal capture of fish, that they failed to hear or to see that hounds and a full field had swept over the hill in front, and had checked, in full view of them, at a small strip of wood in their immediate neighbourhood; in fact, there was little doubt these poachers must, a few minutes before, have headed the fox.  Most embarrassing of all, however, was the fact that amongst the riders was one in immaculate pink, whose face flushed a deeper shade than his coat as he pulled up not a hundred yards distant.  For what must be the feelings of a Justice of the Peace, of strictest principles, who, without warning, lights upon the wife of his bosom, his innocent daughter, and one of his servants, all engaged in the most barefaced poaching?

“Good Gedd!” he was heard to say—­if indeed the words were no stronger—­as, mercifully, the hounds picked up the scent again at that moment, and the chase swept on.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, however, and nothing more was ever heard of this episode.  But report has it that the lord of that manor has no great partiality for kippered salmon.

But salmon-poaching is perhaps not entirely confined to the human species.  There have been instances known where dogs have been the most accomplished of poachers—­generally, it must be said, in conjunction with a two-legged companion.  The lurching, vagabond hound that one sees not infrequently in certain parts of the country, following suspicious-looking characters clad in coats with suspiciously roomy pockets, might, no doubt, be easily trained to take salmon from burns, or from the shallow water into which, in the autumn, the fish often run.  And, to the present writer’s mind, a black curly-coated retriever recalls himself as a poacher of extreme ability.  A most lovable dog was “Nero,” but—­at least as regards salmon—­he was a most immoral breaker of the law.  It was well, perhaps, that