orange, a Warwick pippin, and one or two little russets. Then a few minutes' rest, with an old pipe drawing well and plenty to look at. This part of the valley is a sanctuary for wild duck, and besides them the moorhens are worth watching; so are the water-rats, falsely so-called. Then over the stile, through a withy-bed, and the best place of all for the grayling, which are rising well again now. A wide shallow below a picturesque mill, with a few autumn flowers still surviving in the garden, the old church tower showing up behind, and alongside me, across a marshy bit trodden down by passing cattle, is the valley road, with a friend of old days passing occasionally and exchanging greetings and items of village news.

I spend an hour or so at this spot amongst the persistently rising grayling. They differ from trout in that way; it is always worth while going on putting the same fly over them, and nothing seems to put them down, probably because they stay deeper in the water, excepting just at the moment of a rise, and so see less of what is going on in the air above. The big fin and the air-bladder help them to come up almost vertically when they rise. I lay out my catch. Nice, clean, silvery fish, with a faint scent of wild-thyme. Each one glittered

with colour when he came out of the water, opal tints on silvery pearl-grey, with dark head and back, which bears a violet fin shot with purple-red, as I have heard it described, I forget by whom. A nice full basket; some to be distributed to old friends passed on my way home, some to appear at to-morrow's breakfast; and excellent they are, split open, dipped in flour and grilled, and, when still very hot, a little lump of butter placed upon them, should there be any butter in these days of high prices.

And so back to our starting-place, to pick up the bicycle and pack the heavy waders thereon. Fishing days are short in October, and the evenings not as they were in the summer months. It is well to linger at the top of the rise, where the narrow valley widens out, and look back at the scene. The gorgeous tints on the woodlands are mellowing in the afternoon light. Distances are misty-blue, and the smoke of the village lies as a fragrant haze about the wooded slopes.

A haze on the far horizon, an infinite tender sky,

The ripe fruit of the cornfield, the wild geese sailing high; And all on upland and woodland, the charm of the golden

rod:

Some of us call it "Autumn,"
And others call it "God."

The peace of autumn is over the woodlands and the water-meadows with their silver ribbon of winding stream, as we leave the valley and pedal homewards to tea by the fireside in the study, and a quiet evening with the winter consolations of "indoors," books and writing materials. Farewell to the fly-rod until after the turn of the year.

IT

XV

BY THE STUDY FIRE

T is not given to all middle-aged folk, still less to those of "present-day maturity (age not specified), to welcome the wild north-easter of winter or to take more than a vicarious interest in its lashing the hungry pike into madness. Such delights are seldom the perquisite of any who have spent forty years of life in all climates, and feel the results during the rapid changes of weather of England in the winter months. To such folk many of the consolations of life must be found during part of November, all December and most of January, by the study fire, or from what can be seen out of the windows. I am lucky myself in having windows both east and west, and generally there is something to be seen therefrom. From the writing-table there is a view of a magnificent old horse-chestnuttree, now naked and leafless, showing its beautiful proportions in black silhouette against

the western sky. Not long ago it was clothed in the glory of great orange and yellow leaves. They withstood the gales and rainstorms of October, but suddenly, on a still November night, they all fell together, for no apparent reason, and in the morning they were piled knee-deep on the grass the grass covering the roots. That was the first indication this year of the coming of the time of suspended animation for fishermen who are not in the full vigour of youth. It was a warm, still day, and the tree's discarded raiment showed up gloriously, gold, orange and scarlet, in the sunshine. Next day began a series of little blizzards with a powdering of snow, followed by damp, grey days; all the leaves have long been swept away to rot and to produce leaf-mould, wherein other plants will some day prosper. It seems a long time until the sticky brown buds at the ends of the twigs of that tree will burst in response to the warm sunshine of spring and to the pressure within of great pale green leaves and columns of pink blossom. Botanists tell us that those brown, sticky bud-cases contain the leaves already formed in miniature, and even tiny columns of pale pink florets. Hitherto I have been content to take on trust, based upon the experience of former years, the certainty