with boys, and we did not wish to court publicity.

"For half an hour we stealthily fired the pistol at the perch basking in the pond without killing anything, and then set about carrying out the more daring project which had been fermenting in my cousins' inventive brains for weeks. To begin with, we dug up turf, cut down bushes, and collected some small pieces of timber, railings, and so on, I forget what. Out of these materials we constructed a most successful dam across the stream immediately below the streamlet which fed the pond (about here, you see). This dodge turned off nearly all the water, and in an hour or so what had been a trout stream was a chain of pools scarcely connected at all, and mostly quite shallow. first part of the felonious operation known, I believe, as damming and ladling' was now completed, and we were ready for the second. So, taking off our stockings, and turning up our knicks as far as they would go, we waded in our shoes into the best pool, which was fortunately covered, on the side towards the garden, by a group of thick trees, and stirred up the mud

The

at the bottom as vigorously as we could with You see why the fives-shoes were

our feet.

wanted.

"I was extremely excited at the prospect of transgressing all laws, public and private, but did not believe that the result would realise the rose-coloured hopes of the inventive Rob, for no fish were visible when we took to the water, and we had no net; but the effect of our movements was remarkable. There were lots of trout hiding under stones and in holes, and the poor things could not stand the muddy mixture at all, and speedily appeared in a halfsuffocated condition at the top of the water. Then ensued a scene of animated confusion. We splashed about, shouting at the tops of our voices, drunk with glory, watching like demented pelicans for signs of the slippery little trout, which we clutched with screams of laughter and threw out on to the bank, tumbling over each other till we were wet to the skin.

Besides about five dozen trout there were eels galore, and we revelled in the massacre till we had filled the bucket and emptied the Then we hastily pulled up the dam,

stream.

and allowed the water to return to its proper channel, and I tell you there were not three happier boys in England."

"And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood,' "" I murmured sympatheti"And I am very happy, for I know that I've been good.''

cally.

The

"Yes," said Anderson, "the really happy boy is the despair of consistent moralists. only way to understand him is to regard him as a survival of barbarism. Your true angler goes in for sport, and prefers his rod and line to a drag net. Not so your boy. Short of going to a fish-shop and hoicking the dead things off the slab into the creel, he regulates his happiness by the weight of the catch. 'Kill many,' he says to himself, 'honestly, if possible.'"

"I suppose," I said, "that you and your cousins would rather have taken those trout by a dynamite cartridge than not at all?"

"Yes," he answered. "Bees roam the country miles from the hive in search of honey, but did you ever see a swarm which had found a honeypot ? I have."

"Is there any more to that ladling episode?" I asked.

"No, no more.

We found the pond had overflowed its banks, and the perch must have been considerably astonished. So was the

cook when she saw the bucket, and heard our mendacious explanations; but nothing retributive occurred, and, so far as I remember, my uncle never heard of our exploit until it was buried in a safe past of uncertain date."

VI.

The Largest Fish.

No amount of moral tales will preach down the aleatory instinct of mankind."

The Law Journal.

My wife had made up our minds early one spring that we ought to secure a small house at the seaside in the best possible situation, not too bracing, but just bracing enough, where baby could get a good sniff at the ozone, or iodine, or whatever it is that brings the little creatures on so quickly and makes their dear little cheeks so brown. She said I could fish, of course, either off the pier, or in one of those tossing little boats, with a lobster pot and a string. As she seemed to be serious on the main point, I promised to call on my friend of the angling anecdotes to ask him whether he