The New Forest Spy | Page 2

the most part darkly hidden, and only to be approached with some little difficulty and at the risk of being caught and held by one of the briars' hundred hands.
The valley was very beautiful, gloriously attractive, and evidently a very sanctuary for blackbirds, one of which every now and then darted out in full velvet plumage, skimmed a few yards, and then dived out of sight again.
They were too common objects to take the boy's attention as he cautiously made his way towards the edge of the little river, but he did stop for a minute as a loud yuk, yuk, yuk, rang out, and a good-sized bird made a streak of green, and, once well in the sunshine, of brilliant scarlet, as it flew over the bushes and amongst the trees in a series of wave-like curves before it disappeared.
"That's the greenest woodpecker and the reddest head I have seen this season," said the boy thoughtfully. "That's a fine old cock-bird, and no mistake. Well, green woodpeckers aren't trout, and he wouldn't take my fly if I dropped it near him, and I don't want him to. Now, then, what do you say to a try here?"
The lad asked himself the question, and responded by going on cautiously for about a dozen yards through about the most unsuitable pieces of woodland possible for a fly-fisher to try his craft.
But Waller Froy, only son of the Squire of Brackendene, was not going to wield a twelve-foot fly-rod, tapering and lissom, and suitable for sending a delicate line floating through the air to drop its lure lightly on the surface of the water. Such practices would have been utterly impossible on any part of the woodland rivulet. But, all the same, he knew perfectly well what he was about, and how to catch the large, fat, dark-coloured, speckled beauties that haunted the stream-- the only way, in fact, unless he had descended to the poacher-like practice of "tickling," and that he scorned.
Waller's way was to proceed cautiously through the undergrowth without stirring bough or leaf till he came to some opening on the bank where he could see the dark, slowly gliding stream, or perhaps eddy, through the overhanging boughs.
Then, with his fly wound up close to the top ring of his short rod, he would pass it through the leaves and twigs with the greatest care and unwind again, letting the fly descend till it dropped lightly on the surface. This he did patiently in fully a dozen different places, winding up after each attempt, and then cautiously following the edge of the stream to try again wherever he came upon a suitable spot. But upon that particular occasion the trout were not at home at the lairs he tried, or else not hungry, so the fly was drawn up again for fresh trials.
"It's too hot," muttered the boy.
But he had all the good qualities of a fisherman, including patience and perseverance, and he went on and on deeper and deeper into the forest, managing so skilfully that he never once entangled his line.
It was very beautiful there in the soft shades. The sun was almost completely shut out, and in some of the openings the pools looked absolutely black, while Waller, perfectly confident that there were plenty of good pound trout lurking in this hiding-place of theirs, went on and on.
He had left the outskirts of the forest far behind, threading the rugged oaks, to make his way through the undergrowth that flourished amongst the beeches--huge forest monarchs that had once been pollarded by the foresters of old, to sprout out again upon losing their heads into a cluster of fresh stems, each a big tree--so ancient that, as the boy gazed back at them from where he wound his way in and out, following the curves and zigzags of the little river, he asked himself why it was that this tract of land was called the New Forest, where everything looked so old.
"How stupid!" he muttered, the next moment. "I forgot. Of course, it was because William Rufus made it for hunting in. It was new then if it isn't now. I wonder whether he ever fished for trout," added the boy, with a laugh. "Good thing for him if he had; people who go fishing don't often get shot. Ah! there ought to be one here."
The denseness of the briars and wild-rose tangles had forced him to make a detour, and now, on drawing near the river again, he came upon so likely a spot that, practising the greatest caution, he dropped his big ugly fly through what was quite a hole in the overgrowth of verdure, beneath which the water lay still and dark.
He was quite right. He felt that there ought to be a fish