“I’ll give you a bit of advice, keeper,” shouted Tom, who was sitting in his shirt paddling with his feet in the river:  “you’d better go down there to Swift’s, where the big boys are; they’re beggars at setting lines, and’ll put you up to a wrinkle or two for catching the five-pounders.”  Tom was nearest to the keeper, and that officer, who was getting angry at the chaff, fixed his eyes on our hero, as if to take a note of him for future use.  Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare, and then broke into a laugh, and struck into the middle of a favourite School-house song,—­

     “As I and my companions
     Were setting of a snare
     The gamekeeper was watching us;
     For him we did not care: 
     For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
     And jump out anywhere. 
     For it’s my delight of a likely night,
     In the season of the year.”

The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of laughter, and the keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently bent on mischief.  The boys thought no more of the matter.

But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer weather lay sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and the green and gray flies flickered with their graceful, lazy up-and-down flight over the reeds and the water and the meadows, in myriads upon myriads.  The May-flies must surely be the lotus-eaters of the ephemerae—­the happiest, laziest, carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few hours of sunshiny life by English rivers.

Every little pitiful, coarse fish in the Avon was on the alert for the flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds daily, the gluttonous rogues! and every lover of the gentle craft was out to avenge the poor May-flies.

So one fine Thursday afternoon, Tom, having borrowed East’s new rod, started by himself to the river.  He fished for some time with small success—­not a fish would rise at him; but as he prowled along the bank, he was presently aware of mighty ones feeding in a pool on the opposite side, under the shade of a huge willow-tree.  The stream was deep here, but some fifty yards below was a shallow, for which he made off hot-foot; and forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and in three minutes was creeping along on all fours towards the clump of willows.

It isn’t often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and in half an hour Master Tom had deposited three thumping fellows at the foot of the giant willow.  As he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and just going to throw in again, he became aware of a man coming up the bank not one hundred yards off.  Another look told him that it was the under-keeper.  Could he reach the shallow before him?  No, not carrying his rod.  Nothing for it but the tree.  So