or grayling still rising in precisely the same spot. Conscious as I was that I was poaching on preserved waters, I threw my fly over him. Yet, was I poaching? I was on the turnpike road, and I made my cast over the stile. Anyhow, the fish came at me at once, and, as some of your anglers say, "attached" himself to my betrayer. Jack landed him on the footpath. Was he poaching? I take to myself the benefit of the doubt, and wouldn't mind doing the same thing again; he was a pretty grayling, say, 1⁄2 lb.

Thus, happy omen! I had caught a fish at my first cast. Our landlord was crazy with joy, and foretold the grand baskets we should make when we got up to the unpreserved water. I may say, in passing, that, strictly speaking, there is no unpreserved water here, for the water we are now about to invade belongs to a club, and there were notice boards up all along warning trespassers, with penalties, by order, and so on. But we were told by the farmers who held the land that they looked on the club as of no account, for they had been paid no rent for years, and they were not likely to get any; so they gave us permission to fish, on the condition that we and they should "share and share alike," with the result

Well, well, I am sorry, I may say grieved, to tell you that our glorious anticipations were doomed to disappointment. After a laborious pursuit of the ins and outs of that winding and bewildering bush-surrounded stream, that one little grayling remained the sole occupant of our basket. We did not share him with the farmers; we brought him home whole, and I had him for breakfast the next morning, and sweet and tender he was. Now why did we catch no fish? There are plenty of trout there, and good ones.

"Well," as our landlord said, "you never know, when you go a-fishing, what may happen. When I was a boy I've gone many a time to the river and caught a dozen big trout of an evening with a worm, under an old stump, while you flyfishers couldn't catch one." He added, "There is a neighbour of mine, he is one of the best anglers in the county. I saw him pull nine tremendous big fellows out of one hole not long ago. Why, yonder he is!" An elderly gentleman was sitting under a large willow on the other side of the river, and when I happened to catch sight of him he was holding a big black bottle up to his mouth, as if he was sucking something out of it. I know not what it was, but he seemed

to be very happy. "What luck?" cried our landlord with a great shout, for the old boy is very deaf. "Luck!" says he. "I've fished this river all my life and never had such a time before. Not a single fish have I got, though I have been here for hours. I wish I hadna come." "Why, look just above you,” cried I; “there's a fine fish rising, just a pretty cast from you.” “Ay, I know him," says he; "that fish ain't a-goin' to fool me. You have a go at him. But what's the use of throwing a fly over a fish like that, with the sun a-shinin' on him and the water as clear as gin? You try him."

Well, now, if this old boy couldn't catch a trout in what one may call his native stream, why should we strangers be disappointed? "Ah!" said our landlord, "if you had but been here yesterday-they were rising all along the river, great big fellows. I never saw anything like it, and very likely it'll be the same to-morrow. Come and have another go at 'em." "Thank you," I said, "not to-morrow, but some other time in the far distant future we may turn up again precisely at 1 p.m., and you have that chicken and peas, new potatoes and egg sauce all ready, will you?" "All right,” said our landlord.

CHAPTER VIII

A DAY ON THE LEA

SKETCH OF THE LEA FROM ITS SOURCE TO ITS MOUTH -IZAAK WALTON AT THATCHT-HOUSE AND HODDESDON-DR. JOHNSON AT LUTON HOO-PANSHANGER OAK-BLEAK HALL-POLLUTION OF THE RIVER OUR DAY'S FISHING

"No life so happy and so pleasant as the life of a wellgoverned angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams which we now see glide so quietly by us."--IZAAK WALTON.

ND only a day; my first acquaintance with that renowned stream. I have been trying to trace on an ordnance map the course of the

Lea from its mouth at Blackwall, where it joins the Thames. From this point to its source I

can claim no personal acquaintance with it beyond the mile or two in which I fished on Bank Holiday. Apart from fishing it must in its pellucid days-say in Izaak Walton's timehave been a most interesting river to explore. Between Barking Creek and Lea Bridge, following it upwards or backwards, the river seems to have three or four arms or branches; then becoming one stream it forms the boundary line between Middlesex and Essex up to Waltham Abbey; thence past Broxbourne to Roydon, where it separates Hertfordshire and Essex. From Roydon it makes a plunge into the very heart of Hertfordshire (only it plunges the other way). There the names of places most noted on its route are Ware and Hertford, between which towns it receives the waters of the Rib and the Beane, and a little westward of Hertford the river Mimram, or rather the little that is left of it by the water company, flows into it. From Hatfield we pursue it to Hide Mill and to Luton in Bedfordshire, and so tracing it to Houghton Regis I lose sight of it altogether. I presume it is thereabouts that it takes its rise.

Besides its beautiful scenery, and its many