largest fish I ever came across, personally, that was killed on such a rag-bag assortment of tackle."

"With one exception?" I repeated mechanically, feeling that we were sliding off into the deep waters of anecdote.

"Yes," said Anderson; "for the next one, which was hooked an hour later, weighed just ten pounds. I felt like a doctor in large practice, or Sawyer late Nockemorf, I assure you. That morning was a succession of calls from the imp of a boy, for by lunch-time we had added a third to our bag—a five-pounder. Then we drew stumps for the day, or we might have glutted the market. So, you see, fish are sometimes caught."

"Yes, but," I said, rising to go, and wondering if Anderson's headaches made him confuse ideas as well as metaphors," but it was the Thames we were speaking of."

"Just so," he replied, as we moved through the darkened hall to the front door; we were speaking of my day with Stephen. It so happens that I told the old chap that story. There is time, you will find, for a good many

stories in a Thames fishing-punt-that day especially, for we did not catch so much as a gudgeon. It was not till I saw it in the Field that I knew we had killed three jack of seven pounds, ten pounds, and five pounds."

"Good heavens!" I ejaculated, "you don't mean to say that Stephen Farebrother sent up that fictitious

"Hush!" he said,-" de mortuis, you know. Mind the step. Good-night."

IV.

His First Salmon.

"Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day."

King Henry V.

WHEN I heard the ting-ting of the electric bell sounding in the kitchen one evening not long after the bootless visit to "The Pines" I have described, I concluded with a tremor that some lonely and sociable neighbour had decided to pay me a late call, unless, of course, it was one of the rival cricket clubs touting for subscriptions. I was trying to recollect which was the one I generally patronise, when the neathanded Phyllis who "answers" our front door ushered in the familiar form of my fishing friend. Married men call on each other very seldom in this suburban village, preferring after